Corner of the Sky
by Mme Bahorel
Summary: The history of a street rat called Feuilly, from his late association with the gang known as Patron Minette to his membership in the exclusive “literary society” called Les Amis de l'ABC. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

Dark had long since fallen, and a cold winter wind negotiated each turn of the narrow alleys as if it knew the way better than the struggling inhabitants. One of them, little more than a boy, pulled what he called a coat closer around him as he forced his way against the wind. He wanted to collapse as soon as he reached the door of the house in which he took a room, but a familiar dark shadow fell across the door just as he approached. He sighed and bore himself up as best he could in his exhaustion.

"Look what the cat dragged in," came a rough voice. "I always knew you had shit for brains."

"What do you want?" the boy asked.

"Got a job for you."

"I have a job."

"I mean a real job. Something that'll actually put food on your plate. God, you used to be a pretty boy, had real chances. Now look at you. I'm letting you come back."

"I said no, Babet." The boy ran a hand through his close cropped curls in a tired yet self-conscious gesture. "I have a job. It may not be the best I could do, but I could do worse, and you're asking me to do worse. At least I'm not hurting anybody."

"You're killing yourself. You look like a damned consumptive."

"I'm not sick."

"Fine, you still look like bloody hell. When did you last eat?"

"This morning. I'm not going back, Babet."

"Where are you working?"

"Lesage mill."

"Explains why you look like you shaved your head."

"Just shut up and let me go inside."

"You're worth more than some grimy mill."

"I'm worth more to you, you mean."

"Why the fuck did I ever bother to teach you to read if you're throwing it away on some goddamned mill?"

"I still don't know. Put ideas in my head, gave me morals. I'm sure you didn't intend that."

"Damn straight I didn't - don't know where you got those funny ideas. It's a real job. No one is going to get hurt. No one home but the servants, they won't know a thing until it's long over. Been checking it out for a week."

"What's wrong with the boy? Didn't I find you a live one?"

"You're the smallest good lockpick I've ever seen. I don't want to risk star glazing. Too much noise. Unless you've already destroyed your fingers in that shithole."

"Life is just a shithole, ok? Leave me alone."

"A favour, as to who raised you."

"I raised myself."

"Taught you to read, didn't I? Taught you a good trade. Ain't my fault you turn your back on it."

"It's your fault you didn't do the same for your own kids."

"I don't know what happened to 'em, alright? Things get lost. You want in or not?"

"I'm not going back."

"We're going in on Monday night. Come with us, you won't have to work Tuesday." A gust of wind forced the boy to pull his coat even more firmly around his thin shoulders. "Come in, you'll come back out with a real coat." Babet came enough into the light to prove that even he could afford an overcoat in this bitter February.

"I can't. I left for a reason."

"Yeah, because you were stupid. Think about it. You know where to find us."

"All the same?"

"Me, Brujon, Claquesous are all in. You can check on little Parnasse, too. He'll be what you should have been. You'll think about it, at least?"

The boy thought for what felt an eternity. Babet was content to wait. "I'll think about it."

"Good. You know where to find us." He slid off into the night.

He's getting as good as Claquesous with that disappearing act, thought the boy as he wearily dragged himself up the stairs to his tiny garret.

Fumbling in the dark, he finally found the matches with which to light what was left of a tallow candle. As the flame took hold, he wrinkled his nose at the scent of the smoke. Wax candles were simply beyond his means, but that knowledge did not instill in him a liking for the smell of tallow. He remembered the first time he had seen a wax candle. The smoothness. The subtlety of the light. How he always stole the candles for his own use when there was a housebreaking after that. Babet. Everything came back to Babet in the end.

A bit of bread and cheese was all he could afford for dinner. It was all he had had for breakfast, as well, and lunch was not within his means, either. He preferred to work straight through because it allowed him to look forward to the end of the day. As he sat down and blew out his candle, the smell making him suddenly nauseous, the pain in his stomach reminded him that there was a reason he had grown used to more than this. More than this life, if it could even be called a life.

The prostitutes had thought him an adorable little thing at one time, and they had enjoyed teasing him as he was slowly becoming a man. They had laughed at him, given him drinks, and at the age of fourteen, more or less, they had all assured him that he was going to grow up handsome and important. He still went through those neighbourhoods, but although he was now old enough to be of more interest, no one paid any attention to him anymore. His thick curls shorn, his thin face looked even thinner without the customary frame. Days spent indoors, with all the smoke of the mill works, had contrived to turn him as pale as if he had never seen the sun. It was hardly a surprise Babet had thought he looked consumptive, but it was wounding to the ego. He remained small for his age, and though he was certain he would have to grow eventually, each day he could afford only one meal, spread between two mealtimes, reminded him that he just might not.

Two years ago, Babet had told him he had the world on a string. At fourteen, he already excelled as a lockpick, and his small size was a distinct advantage in certain endeavours. He had long since graduated from going down the chimney to the art of opening windows and doors from the outside. He had been lucky, for a gamin, having found such protectors as Babet and Brujon. He had learned a trade and would go far if he applied himself earnestly. He was going to grow up to be handsome, all the prostitutes told him, usually while playing with his long brown curls in jealousy.

The boy ran a self-conscious hand through his hair. Was this a life? Always hungry, always tired, never a kind word from another person, never a word at all most of the time. Seeing the sun only on Sundays, losing his sense of smell, losing the dexterity of his thin fingers as they roughened with work, losing his dignity as he bent daily to the will of the foreman. At one time, he had been literate, handsome, and respected. Now, he was beginning to wonder if it was possible to forget even how to read, since he never had the time or the energy for it, much less the money for more candles.

Fully dressed, he collapsed on his rough bed. Slowly, he forced himself back to a sitting position in order to remove his boots, then he curled up under his single blanket and fell asleep immediately. It was only eight in the evening, but he never got enough sleep. His thin body was not strong enough to do the work he forced it to do on the fuel he forced it to consume.

He woke at dawn, as always. Babet had said Monday night. Today was Saturday. Pay day. The grey light was barely enough with which to see, but he had long grown accustomed to feeling his way around in the half light. He finished a scrap of bread for breakfast, and spent his last sou on an apple on the way to work.

Concentration failed him. He was lucky to avoid injuring himself, but the wrath the foreman did not inspire any greater attention to his work. Instead, his attention was on his life, or perhaps life in general. By the end of the day, he had made his decision. He collected his pay and left, but instead of going home, as his body longed to do, he forced his way through the cutting wind to a grimy wineshop.

He stood outside for a long time, looking at the warm lights coming through the window. A sudden gust of wind blew right through him, and that made him take the decision to go inside. The promised warmth and light were present, along with a great deal of smoke overlaying the twin smells of cheap wine and greasy food. His stomach contracted at the smell of food he could not afford. His privacy had cost him dearly, though it was hardly possible for another body to share the tiny closet he called a room.

He stood in the doorway, not looking around so much as absorbing the atmosphere. How many evenings had he spent here as a child? How many times was this the life promised to him as a young man? The only women were prostitutes or the daughters of the owner. The men were of any age and a variety of trades, but dishonesty was the common character. Not among themselves all the time, for there was a certain sort of honesty in dealing with dishonest people, but in society as a whole, this was the scum. And yet they had the money for hot food and drink, and many people who thought themselves respectable did not. Which was worse, the boy was no longer certain.

"There you are," the rough voice of the night before muttered in his ear. Taking him by the shoulders, Babet directed him towards a table in back. "The boy has returned to us," he announced.

In the smoky half light of the wineshop, Babet looked even greasier than usual, his long black hair lying over his shoulders like snakes, his dark eyes little more than beads in the leather of his face. He was a thin man, but strong, and he formed an excellent pair with Brujon, the much larger man who stood as the boy was brought over.

He clapped a meaty hand on the boy's shoulder. "So he has come back. Sit down and eat, you look nearly dead."

"If dead is without life, then I already am," the boy answered, already settling back into the tones of his elders. "Where's Parnasse?"

"Out. He'll be in when he gets cold, I suppose, though I told him to keep clear. He isn't involved in this job."

"I might not be, either. I want details. I'm not giving up a job just to go to prison." And with that, he sat down, took a drink from a glass already on the table, and rested his head in his hand as he realised what he was doing.

"Welcome back, Feuilly."


	2. Chapter 2

Hot food and a flagon of wine were set in front of him before he even realised they had been ordered. He ate ravenously, listening to the details Babet dealt out like a deck of cards, alternately speaking to Brujon and Feuilly.

"I'm going to need some practice, see if I can still get these fingers to do what they used to. What do the locks look like?"

"Garden gate is old, lock accessible only from the inside, but I think you can slide through to get to it. We'll be sure to oil the hinges from both sides. French doors can only be opened from the inside without breaking anything -"

"And you're afraid of any noise at all, and even if there isn't broken glass tinkling, you don't want to risk the initial bang with star glazing."

"Right. The kitchen door is where you'll best go in."

"Dammit, you said this was going to be easy and painless."

"It will be, if you're quiet. We can't afford fuck ups."

"And if it succeeds, the servants will take the blame for opening for somebody and no one will ever be looking for us. Kitchen door is brilliant, in a sense, but where do I go from there?"

"Turn left, head out any door. I think. We haven't been able to get inside. House is too tall to get Parnasse up to the roof."

"I don't like this. Why can't we just raise the latch from the outside?"

"They aren't latches, if Parnasse isn't too thick. Sent him through the fence to make the canvass. Bolts, he says. He tried lifting 'em, no go."

"So someone is protecting something of actual worth."

"Damned straight. It should be a nice haul."

"What are we looking at?"

"Just the drawing room and the library. Yes, the library," Babet repeated as Feuilly couldn't help looking up from his already empty plate, a piece of bread still frozen in his hand.

"So I come in through the kitchen, left will take me into the dining room, we think, and I open one of the doors for the rest of you."

"Exactly."

"How big of a job are we talking about?"

"Just what we can carry, no furniture."

Brujon finally spoke. "I wouldn't say no to a couple of rugs, though."

"If there's time," Babet warned him. "You can count on some books, plenty of little trinkets to pawn, and even your precious -"

"Candles," finshed Feuilly. He sighed. "I can't make any promises." He shoved the last of the gravy-covered bread into his mouth, then washed it down with the last of the wine. "These fingers may not be what they used to be. It's been two years, more or less." He spread his fingers on the table, looking at the calluses he had earned in two years of work. He swore they had thickened, but in reality, they were still thinner than Babet's thin fingers. "You still have my tools?"

"Of course. Those are prime. You think we'd get rid of them?"

"Find me something and somewhere to practise tomorrow, and if all goes well, then we'll see about Monday night." More wine was set in front of him, from where, he did not know or care. He drank deeply. "And this does not mean I am back. It means I have no desire to return to that hellhole, and I need to live until I can find something better."

"Whatever you say. You don't leave your blood behind so easily."

Feuilly laughed, a sarcastic burst that ill-matched his porcelain features. "My blood could be some fucking aristo, for all anybody knows. You weren't even in Paris when I was born, so don't tell me you know which of my mother's clients is my father. Not all the sons of prosses turn out like you."

"My mother wasn't a pross, dumbshit. But if you think you can escape what life set up for you, you're dead wrong. Sleeping on the streets for however long you had been pushes you into this."

"And becoming literate should be the ticket out, but you don't want it and I don't see it happening for me, yet, so we're all fucked."

"You're smarter than you look."

"Why thank you. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were turning almost fatherly in your old age."

"I'm not old, and you do know better."

"You're older than me, which is good enough. What's the latest?"

"Latest what?"

Feuilly leaned back in his rickety chair and propped his feet on the table. It was easier to slide back into the familiar setting and attitudes than he had thought. "Latest additions."

"No one you know, and no one I trust for this job. The nigger's been hanging around again."

"Hogu is harmless, and quit calling him the nigger when you know his name. Everybody knows his name."

"Whatever. I don't like him hanging about."

"Ever though nobody likes him hanging about? What if he'd rather earn an honest living? Of course, these potentialities never cross your mind. I'm assuming you'd even understand a word as long as 'potentialities'."

"Fuck you."

"What about Guelemer?"

"Dumber than a box of rocks. As if that would have changed. He's doing a stretch at the moment."

"Dumber than a box of rocks. That's real eloquent. How's your real trade?"

"Excuse me for preferring the newspapers to the shit you read. My real trade, as you call it, is unprofitable unless I head out into the provinces. Which ain't never going to happen."

"Afraid you'll accidentally find the wife and kids you misplaced?"

"You could have some respect for your elders."

"I notice you don't say betters."

"Why did I even invite you here?"

"Because I arouse paternal feelings in that iron breast. And you're down on your luck and I'm your boost."

"I hope you were joking."

"About the first part? Hell yeah. As if you could have feelings at all. What time is it? Where's Parnasse?"

Babet checked a battered pocketwatch. "Around nine. He'll be in soon enough. Don't know where he's living at the moment."

"Well, you have assured me that you haven't developed paternal feelings of any sort, if the boy is having to make his way as I did."

A high pitched voice let out a stream of curses one would have though impossible to put together. Momentarily, a dark haired little boy appeared in their corner. "What the fuck happened to you?"

"Well, Parnasse, here is your morality lesson. This -" Babet pointed at Feuilly - "is what is called 'being respectable'."

"Go to hell, Babet. Come here, Parnasse, let me look at you."

"You look like bloody hell."

"I've been reminded of that frequently." Feuilly gently ran his hand over the little boy's black hair. He was really a beautiful child, or would be if he were not dressed in rags, his face smudged with god only knew what. "Are they treating you well?"

"Just as you promised." Feuilly pulled him onto his lap and slid his wineglass over. Montparnasse took a long drink. "So you're back."

"Maybe. We'll see. Sometimes a man needs a drink, know what I mean?"

"Sometimes the only way a man can afford a drink is when his friends are buying," Babet put in warningly.

"I might be back. Is Babet teaching you your alphabet?"

Parnasse wrinkled his nose. "What'd I want that for?"

"See, some people here have sense."

"I'm helping you out, ain't I?"

"You keep saying 'maybe'."

"Fine. Parnasse, you want to see more of me?"

The little boy shrugged. "Why should I give a fuck? You look sick."

Feuilly rolled his eyes. "I'm not sick." He turned to Babet. "I'm back. No more maybes. Get me the practice I need, and this job is a piece of cake. But if you'll excuse me, I have had the longest day of my life, and if anyone comes to find me before noon, they'll find themselves dead. Clear?"

"Crystal. You were always a good boy at bottom, Feuilly."

"Now I feel all warm inside," he responded sarcastically. "I am a good boy at bottom, that's why I can't believe I'm doing this. But you're right - I'm worth more than that fucking mill." He gently kissed the top of Montparnasse's head as he made him get down. "Life is a compromise. So I'm making that compromise. Bring me my tools and a suitable lock or location of a suitable lock tomorrow afternoon. It's going to be done right or not at all."

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

Feuilly got up and stooped to Parnasse's level. "And I'll see you around, holy terror."

"Damn straight I'm a holy terror," Parnasse replied proudly.

"Don't let him drink too much, he's just a waste of good wine. Tomorrow afternoon, then." Feuilly pulled his thin coat around him and walked out.


	3. Chapter 3

Feuilly awoke a little before noon to find that the sun had finally decided to make an appearance, sending bright yellow beams across the bare wooden floor of his garret. He carefully broke the ice in his pitcher and washed his face in the frigid water, unwilling to ask his neighbour for even the momentary use of the small stove that ostensibly provided heat to both rooms. His bed was against the warm wall, delegating the table, and therefore the pitcher, to the cold wall, where it was always just cold enough to put a cap of ice around the mouth.

When Babet entered without knocking, as was his custom, he found Feuilly sitting in his one chair, at the window, with a book open on his lap. "Reading again?"

Feuilly looked up. "Yes. Most people knock."

"I'm not most people. Here." He tossed something dark and soft at Feuilly, which proved to be a cloth cap. "Can't have you catching cold on us."

"Did you bring my tools?" Feuilly carefully marked his place with a scrap of paper and set the book gently on the table, which wobbled under the change in weight.

"Of course." He pulled a packet, wrapped in rags, from his pocket. "Just as you left them."

"And I've a place to practise?"

"There's a gate to the Luxembourg that looks similar. Brujon can provide cover from one side; you and me pretend to be having a conversation. No worries."

"No worries. He's waiting now, I suppose?"

"Of course." Feuilly pulled on his cap and followed Babet out of the building. "Reading again. I should think you would have learned by now that there's no point in anything but newspapers."

"I'll read what I please. You're hardly one to tell me what I should and shouldn't do."

"I think I've proved I know what's better for you, since I would never have told you to go work in that hellhole. Lesage mill, indeed."

"It's honest work. It'll end up killing me, but it's honest work."

"There is nothing honest about a mill."

"Oh, and there is in breaking into houses, I suppose."

"It's no worse, and it put food in your stomach for a lot longer that that damned mill did, so don't turn all high and mighty on me."

"Shove it. You're starting to sound like a father."

"You wouldn't know what a father sounds like."

"It sounds like you, right now. Don't tell me you discovered emotions in the past two years."

"Can't afford them, and you can't, either, so I don't know why you persist in them."

"Did you ever consider they may be born in some people, like blue eyes or freckles?"

"Don't be an idiot. Either you can afford them or you can't, and you give up what you can't afford."

"Well, I don't particularly want to give them up, and so I'll continue to focus them on Parnasse, if it's all the same to you."

"Do what you like, since you never listen to me anyway."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes, you're here, and it's a good thing, too. I wasn't sure how we were going to do this without you."

"I hate it when you lie to me, Babet. This job isn't as easy as you're trying to make it out to be."

"It's easier than the last one."

"Anything is easier than the last one. You fucking gave me scars during that one."

"I never said you had to go over the wall."

"You would have killed me if I'd left the goods, and they weren't going through the locked gate."

"It's still not my fault you cut yourself."

Feuilly pulled his hands out of his pocket and pointed to the slice across his right palm that cut across all the natural lines. "This is your fault, and we're all damned lucky no one was caught. And I'm damned lucky I didn't have all my weight on this hand, otherwise it might be useless!"

"Have your fit if you must." Babet was bored already.

"Fuck you. I don't even know why I'm doing this."

"Because you happen to like your candles and your books. Don't call me greedy - I'm not the one who has to have his wax candles."

"I have never needed wax candles."

"No, you just don't like to live without them. That is greed. And I'm making sure you can have them, so don't complain about the means. They're all you can afford."

"I told you I'd do it, all right?"

"All right." The rest of the cold walk was conducted in silence. Babet handed Feuilly his tools only when they reached the gate on which he could practise.

"Brujon. Fine day, ain't it?"

"You showed up."

"Sometimes a man gets sick of having his friends buy him the only drinks he's had in years. I have my pride." He carefully unwrapped the thin pieces of steel and took a deep breath as he took them in hand. "Well, we'll see if I've been ruined by respectability. Keep talking, if we're attempting any sort of cover at all." He bent to take a look at the lock, feeling the keyhole carefully.

"I caught him reading again," Babet told Brujon.

"Since when is that new. Have you nothing better to tell him?" Feuilly carefully inserted first one, then the other of his tools and slowly started to move the latch mechanism back and forth, testing the resistance and sound.

"What were you reading that was so thick?"

"Montesquieu. Persian Letters. Getting an education is not a terrible thing, I'll have you know."

"It's a waste of time when this is all you do with it."

"It won't be all I do with it." Suddenly the gate moved in Brujon's direction. "Well, it appears certain things are not so easily forgotten. Monday night, you said?"

"Right, that's tomorrow night. We'll meet you."

Feuilly nodded. "I'm not going to work tomorrow, then. You win. A man cannot live on bread alone, and I'm sick of trying. But I will die rather than do a stint in jail, is that clear? If I don't like the look of things, I'm out of there."

"Agreed."

"Brujon?"

"Agreed."

Feuilly carefully wrapped his tools back in their rags. "I will see you gentlemen tomorrow night, then. Not before. I have other things to do." He slipped the packet into his pocket and walked away quickly. Neither man bothered to follow.

He soon found himself walking along the river, in the shadow of Notre Dame. He stopped to look up at the towers, brilliant white in the sunlight. Why was it in the power of some men to create such beauty? he asked himself. Why was it not in his power? Some men had made their living designing those brilliant towers. Others had earned their way carving the gargoyles and reliefs, and still others supported themselves in the glassworks that provided the huge windows. So much money. So much work. To hell with serving God: those men had served themselves better than he ever could.

It was late enough that the morning services had ended, but the evening services would not yet begin. Feuilly crossed to the Ile de la Cité, and at a wooden door reached by walking between the perfect arcs of the flying buttresses, he knocked and waited. The aged bellringer let him climb to the top of the north tower for the princely sum of three sous.

The wind was worse here, but Feuilly felt as if he could breathe. The freedom he felt was worth any price. He crammed his cap into his pocket and let the bitter wind rush through his hair. It was a clean wind this high, and Paris lay below him, crowded in winter smoke. In the distance, the hill of Montmartre rose above the city. Feuilly found himself looking down into the courtyard of the Louvre, wondering what could be so remarkable about that palace. Things, that was all it was. It was composed of things, shiny things, old things, things someone had decided were rare and should be expensive. Things the likes of which he would never see. If he were a good boy, he would never see them, that is. If he stuck with Babet, he would see many things, hold many expensive things, maybe even keep some of those shiny things. But it wasn't enough.

He turned and looked over towards the Place des Vosges, where he believed the planned robbery would take place. It was quiet and settled and clean, and in the summer, it was green and shady. They had once staked out a house there, but determined the time was not right. Feuilly still remembered looking into the dining room and seeing the chandelier catch the thin moonlight. Living at night, he had developed an obsession with light, watching the strange forms it took. That chandelier could never be as beautiful fully lit as it had been to him in the moonlight that night.

He closed his eyes and in his mind, sketched the pattern the light had made through the crystals. In the absence of paper, he found himself stroking the stones that formed the sort of window through which he had been watching Paris. It was enough. It was time to take his chance and do what he must.

The promise was not to Babet, but to himself. A man who can read Montesquieu is worth more than ten francs a week in a mill, he told himself. Though he was far more proud of the two volumes he had been able to purchase, each book he found, regardless of the source, was another step to him. And the opportunity to raid a library was more than he was willing to give up. Pride, yes, but pride took many forms. And if he had to steal in order to satiate his thirst for education, then he was determined to pay the price. He could always be proud of his knowledge, and even the circumstances from which it had been gleaned.

"I do what I must, do you hear me?" Feuilly was not certain if he sought the absolution of God or of Paris. "I do what I must."


	4. Chapter 4

The first grey fingers of dawn hit the window just as Feuilly woke. He was tired, but habit forced him awake before the sun. His breath hung in the still, cold air, and he huddled under his blanket as tightly as he could.

There were only two choices: go to work, or stay in bed. It was cold in bed, but it was likely colder without the blanket. If he went to work, he risked wearing himself out and endangering the night's task. If he stayed in bed, he risked losing a position that he despised, but one that was guaranteed. Success was never a guarantee in robbery, and Feuilly knew that if he did not show up for his real job, he would no longer be employed.

The question remained: did he care? He had promised Babet that he would help them, but he had also insisted that he had not come back for good.

He blew out another cloud of ice crystals. Yes, on the whole it was better not to burn any bridges. Reluctantly, he forced himself out of bed. In his earlier excitement, he had forgotten the little necessities, such as food, and only now discovered there was nothing to eat in his room. The clock tower began to chime seven, which was Feuilly's cue to leave for work. He stood and thought for a minute, then pulled on the cap Babet had given him and headed to work, stopping to buy a couple of rolls on the way.

He took the privilege of a lunch break, determined not to wear himself out in the hope that the night's plans would be fruitful. Working slowly, he ignored the shouts of the foreman, doing as he was told, but not exactly in the amount of time it was expected of him. After two years, he knew how to walk the line between being chastised and being fired. He had done it before in exhaustion; now he did it to conserve his energy.

Following the usual pattern, Babet would not come until after eleven, which gave Feuilly four hours to himself once he was dismissed from the mill. He found a tavern Babet had never been known to frequent and bought himself dinner and a little wine to calm his nerves. The worst that could happen, he told himself, is that I might be a little short on money this week. He took his time with his meal, savouring the hot food on the chance he might not see any again for some time.

It was well after eight when Feuilly finally left the warmth of the crowded tavern. Trying to accustom himself to the cold, he took the longest route home he knew. He played with the buttons of his coat in order to keep his fingers supple.

He arrived in pitch darkness, but he refused to light a candle. He would not be allowed one later that night, so he had to grow used to the dark. Carefully and silently, he edged towards his bed and dug a piece of cloth from under the mattress.

His discovery was a coarse canvas sack with a rough drawstring. He held it close, as a child does a blanket, gently stroking the thick material.

It was more than two years ago, he thought. It must have been. He was not quite certain where that house had been, but no one had thought to check the wall that surrounded the garden. The gate had only a simple latch, which unfortunately had been allowed to latch behind them. The night had been cloudy and not too warm, so that the windows were still closed that night. The bad luck had been a lack of clairvoyance: how was anyone to predict the butler's indigestion would send him down to make a cup of tea? Feuilly had stayed behind to relock every door they had opened, preferring to cover his tracks. He preferred to take things from drawers or from shelves that were overly full, so that he would have plenty of time to pawn the items before they were missed. Babet had been waiting outside the property, but a gust of wind took the gate from him, and the force caused it to latch. Claquesous had long since disappeared into the night. Had Feuilly not been running for his life, it would have been a simple matter for him to unlock it from the inside. Instead, he could abandon the bag and slide through, or come over the wall with all his profits. No one had foreseen the possibility that broken glass had been embedded in the mortar precisely to keep intruders out. As he vaulted over, the hand with most of his weight took the edge, but his right hand landed on the razor sharp remains of what must have long ago been a bottle.

The bloodstains had never come out of the canvas. In pain, Feuilly had grabbed onto the bag, holding his wounded hand together and letting the rough canvas soak up the blood as they ran to the river, where Babet helped him bandage it the best they could in the dark. His hand had taken nearly a month to heal, and in that month, he could do nothing. As soon as he was able to use it again, he had found the position at Lesage mill, found a local street urchin to deliver to Babet, and untangled himself from his past. The process had taken less than a week once he made the decision to break with his past. And now he was back again.

He stood and immediately put his hand on the matchbox on the table. He was uncertain if it was from long familiarity with the tiny room or if his senses were returning. Often he had to fumble for it, but now it came into his grasp without any thought. In any case, he lit the candle, wincing again at the smell. He carefully checked his tools and slipped them into his pocket.

A glimmer of gilt caught the corner of his eye as the flickering candle found the spine of one of his books. Feuilly rearranged the stack with care - he owned only seven volumes, but these seven volumes were his life. None were new. Only two had been purchased honestly - Rousseau and Voltaire. Montesquieu, La Fontaine, Molière, and Plato had been stolen. A cheap novel missing the cover and title page had been found on a trash heap. Feuilly had never learned the author or the title, but he had learned more of how ladies and gentlemen behaved from that book than by reading what he believed they read. He admitted a certain excitement at the prospect of new books, in spite of the dread he felt at going back.

Babet arrived earlier than expected. To calm himself, Feuilly had opened Montesquieu and become absorbed in the Persian Letters once again.

"You're reading a damned book at this hour?"

"I was waiting for you."

"Come on." They joined Brujon in silence and walked without haste, doing their best not to look suspicious. Feuilly had been wrong in his speculation. Instead of turning east to the Place des Vosges, they turned west, towards the Champs Elysées.

"This isn't going to be as easy as you promised," Feuilly whispered accusingly. He received no response.

They turned down a small alley which became a mews. The gate was broken, giving them a clear entry. Moving slowly and keeping to the wall for fear of waking the horses, the three men slid along the path until it narrowed further, past the stables. Feuilly could see why they had to go tonight. The only way in or out was through the gate that protected the mews from intrusion, and it would likely be fixed the next day.

"I thought you said Claquesous was in," Feuilly whispered to Babet.

"He's keeping an eye on the place," Babet whispered back, his voice little more than a breath.

They stopped in front of a wrought iron gate. The fence to which it was attached was also iron, though it was covered in ivy. It was impossible to go over the top of the fence - nothing provided a foothold high enough to assist the climb. The slight shadow of a man disappeared quickly as they approached.

"Good evening, Claquesous," Feuilly addressed the shadow. It nodded to him but did not speak.

They worked in silence. There was no snow, and the clouds were too thin for rain, protecting their efforts. The moon was nearly through its cycle, giving a decent cover of darkness without forcing them to rely only on touch. The bars of the gate proved too narrow for Feuilly to transit, but by moving aside the ivy, he could just get his head through the fence. It was not easy for him to slide through, as the ivy tried to catch on his coat and cap, but he was thin enough that where his head could pass, the rest of him could follow. From inside, it was only a matter of seconds before the latch was lifted. Feuilly gave Babet a warning glare as he stepped into the garden, handing over the oil can.

The garden was dead in February, but in the summer, it must have been lush. Feuilly carefully noted the rosebushes as he kept his steps to the border. He feared the sound of his heavy boots on the cobbles that formed the path. The ground was softer than he would have liked, but not soft enough that he would either track in mud or leave behind distinct footprints.

The kitchen door was not far, and Feuilly was relieved to discover that it was indeed locked. The lock was too simple to keep him out, however, and even sooner than he anticipated, he felt the latch lift with an ease he was hard pressed to control. He was uncertain if he only felt it snap into place or if it really did make a click. His nervousness was starting to get the better of him.

With a deep breath, he took the oil can and carefully sent oil where he believed the hinges were attached inside, very slowly opening the door to avoid even the slightest squeak. Soon, it was open wide enough for him to slip inside.

The kitchen was dark except for a faint red glow coming from the dying embers in the fireplace. Feuilly paused a moment to take stock of his surroundings. An old chest stood near the door he assumed led to the servants' staircase. A long, heavy table stood in his way: he would have to be careful not to bump into the bench on the near side. A new stove stood next to the fireplace. He saw the door through which it was assumed one went into the main house. Taking a step toward it, he turned and looked at the chest. It would take less than a minute to see if it held what he hoped it did. Moving quickly but silently, he carefully opened the top drawer, then the next, then the next. In the third he found what he sought: a box of candles. Perfect white tapers. He grabbed as many as he could, two handfuls, and placed them in the bottom of his sack before closing the drawer and making his way into the dining room.

The dining room was beautiful, but it was not blessed with french doors. Any missing silver would be noticed immediately, so he did not give the sideboard another glance as he carefully moved around it. The next room was the drawing room. Heavily carpeted and heavily papered, a decent assortment of trinkets waited for them. Feuilly softly opened the French doors that led to the garden, the signal for the others to approach. He took the library for himself, lighting one of the used candles from the wall with a match from the fireplace. The curtains had been drawn, and the doors were closed, so he felt safe in examining the volumes. A single candle was not enough to illuminate the room, but it permitted a search of the desk and a passing acquaintance with the bookshelves.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, then carefully set to work examining the contents of the desk. The first paper knife was not sharp enough to merit the title, but he carefully wrapped and pocketed a second, as well as a penknife. Babet never went unarmed, but Feuilly had long ago pawned his only weapon. Any knife at all was a source of comfort. He took up a couple of pens and a bottle of ink, as well, and put back a handful of writing paper when he discovered a blank book that had barely been filled. Other drawers held personal papers and receipts, nothing of interest to him, but then he came to the locked drawer. He opened it more from curiosity than from any sense of profit: after all, only the snuffbox on top of the desk was of any value, and he was still deciding if he should risk taking it. The locked drawer, however, proved a real treasure. Underneath some papers was a purse full of coins. Feuilly looked around. No one else had yet entered the library. He carefully pocketed the purse, replaced the papers, and relocked the drawer. At the worst, he thought, the servants will not be paid on time, though what does it matter when you live and work in a house like this?

He moved on to the bookshelves. He went through an entire section, unable to read the titles: some he knew were in Latin, some in Greek, and others in languages he did not recognise. Moving to another part of the room, he found some translations. The Iliad. A different volume of Plato. A couple of histories. The diary of some Englishman. He looked around. One volume lay on a table, and out of curiosity, he opened it. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The soft leather cover, the gilt lettering, and inside, every other page contained the most beautiful, most detailed etchings he had ever seen. He carefully turned the pages, each more beautiful than the last.

"Would you fucking hurry up?" a harsh voice hissed in his ear. "We're done in there."

Feuilly nearly jumped out of his skin as Babet interrupted him. He put the beautiful book into his bag with the rest, went back after the snuffbox and some trinkets that filled empty space on the shelves, then followed Babet back into the drawing room to lock up.

It was an easy escape, as easy coming out as it had been going in. The kitchen door co-operated with his need for silence. Claquesous held his bag as he locked the garden gate. Only the passage through the fence caused any delay, as Feuilly was very careful that no one hear the stolen purse he wished to keep for himself.

The four men headed to the river to divide the spoils. Only then did Feuilly realise Brujon had a rug rolled over his shoulder. "What the hell do you think you can do with those?"

"I have a dealer. I don't complain about your books, do I?"

"Fine." Feuilly set out what he had not intended for his personal use. Trades were made: Babet wanted the snuffbox because it still had a good supply of snuff. The addition of a couple of vases, one in jade, covered the projected cost of the promised overcoat. Claquesous had already disappeared.

"You going to be all right on what you've got?"

"You're sounding positively paternal, Babet. Don't worry about me. I got paid on Saturday. At this point, I just want to go home and get some sleep before the shops open. You still have your connections in the Temple?"

"I never lose connections. We'll get you that coat tomorrow night. Chassigneux is out, just so you know."

"So Jacquemont is my best bet at getting rid of this stuff?"

"If he remembers you."

"He'll remember me."

"Come by the tavern at sundown, I'll take you up to Temple, get you the whole works if you can afford it."

"Deal. Brujon, you'll be around tomorrow?"

"Be at the tavern as always. Time to start planning the next game."

"I'm in."


	5. Chapter 5

The tavern was always warm and bright compared to the street, and while the food was rough and greasy, the patrons had never known anything better. The wine was tolerable and plentiful, and privacy of a sort was guaranteed. Babet and Brujon disliked straying far from it, and so they could always be found at their table in the corner, sometimes joined by Claquesous, who always hid in the shadows and drank from under a mask. Feuilly remembered what he looked like, but just barely. A few violent murders and the mask had seemed prudent for continued freedom of movement. No one disagreed.

A dark green overcoat draped across the back of Feuilly's chair made a nice pad against which he visibly relaxed. Paper wrapped packages were piled next to his chair, and an empty plate sat in front of him, waiting to be cleared. Planning the next game had taken second place to simply relishing the heat and companionship he had denied for two years of respectability.

"Well dear me, look who it is! You poor boy, what's happened to you?" A heavily painted woman in her thirties had caught sight of Feuilly and pushed her way into their corner.

"Mireille!" He quickly pulled his feet down from the table. "My god, how are you?"

"Same as always. You don't look well." She pulled over another chair and sat down tiredly, though the night had not yet begun. Her attire was at least five years out of date, the skirt of her evening dress stained at the bottom and the shawl she now kept closed tightly over her exposed breasts looked even older as loose threads hung from the centre of knit rosettes.

"Everybody thinks I don't look well. Don't you at least have something witty to say about it?"

"I'm too tired for wit tonight, honey." She leaned over and started to pick at his curls. "Such a shame. You had such pretty hair."

Feuilly pulled away. "Why the hell is everyone obsessed with my goddamned hair? Yes, I cut my hair. I don't look like a damned girl anymore. Why is it anybody's business what happened or why?"

Mireille wasn't deterred by his outburst. She just stood up behind him and put her arms around him in a motherly gesture. "You never looked like a girl, honey. We care because you care. You was a dandy in your own way, always kept those pretty curls so nice." She kissed him on the cheek.

"He started working at Lesage mill," Babet informed her.

"Lesage mill? Oh, you poor dear." No matter how often Feuilly jerked his head away, nothing kept her fingers out of his curls. "No wonder you don't look well."

"Well, I'm not working there anymore. I'm sick of selling myself for nothing," Feuilly shot out bitterly. Mireille frowned. He sighed and took her hand. "I'm sorry, Mireille. We're all selling ourselves for nothing, aren't we? I went to Notre Dame on Sunday. Why aren't there jobs like that anymore?"

"Like what, honey?"

"Building cathedrals. Making beautiful things that people believe in, instead of feeding yarn into a machine that makes cheap cloth."

"Because no one believes in anything anymore."

"But why not? What reason was there to believe in anything then?"

"Because people were stupid, and so is this conversation," Babet replied.

"I wasn't asking you. So, Mireille, you've heard why I disappeared for a while. What have you been up to?"

"Same as always. You've got to be old enough by now I should be finding you a girl."

"While the offer is appreciated, I'm not in much condition for one at the moment. I only just quit work today."

"I thought you said you weren't working yesterday!"

"And I decided yesterday morning that it was better not to burn any bridges in case the job wasn't as easy as you said."

"When have I ever given you cause not to believe me?"

"Lying is second nature to you - it comes right after breathing. I've got myself enough to keep going for a few weeks, so don't count me into anything sooner than that."

"He's gotten soft," Babet explained to Mireille.

"I have not! Just because I have a conscience and don't particularly like either stealing my living or whoring myself - sorry, Mireille - doesn't mean I've gotten soft! If anything I've gotten hard."

"So hard he needs me to get him clothes."

"Shut up. I needed your connections to get a good deal on an overcoat. You're the one who insisted I can't keep dressing like this."

"I don't work with damned labourers.

"Ooh, M. Babet's a fine gent now, ain't he?"

"Feuilly, he's just looking out for you."

He leaned his head on her shoulder. "I know, Mireille - that's the worst of it. Why does he look out for me when he doesn't look out for anyone else but himself?"

"Because everyone's got a soft spot, honey, and you're ours."

"Babet doesn't. You have a bigger one than me, anyway."

"Maybe, maybe not. You stopped speaking argot."

"It took you this long to notice? You're as bad as my dead mother."

"You don't know that your mother is dead."

"I know that since I'm not, she must have cared enough to keep me alive, and that means that if I wandered off, she would have found me. Thus I assume two things: she was a whore, and she is dead."

Mireille kissed him on the cheek again. She was too young to be his mother and too old to be anything but motherly to him. "My boy is going to be handsome and important, especially if he keeps dreaming."

"You're pregnant?"

"No, you, silly!" It was an old joke between them. "You're going to be important, and that's better than being respectable."

"More important, he'll be respected if he learns his lessons. Speaks every argot, if he chooses. Real Parisian, not a damned villager like me."

"Not quite - he gets a bit of a southern accent every so often, must be from his mother."

"I am still here. And I don't call bread _paing_," he said, overemphasising the southern nasality that occasionally did creep into his voice.

"Sometimes you do, honey. It's cute."

"At least I'm not a damned Breton," Feuilly replied, looking pointedly at Babet.

"I am not a Breton, and one more word like that out of you -"

"And what? Naw, you're no Breton. Slippery bastard, but too dark to be Breton. Pretensions to a be a dandy, though. You should have seen how he was trying to dress me up, Mireille. I swear, they're selling clothes a hundred years out of date in the Temple, and Babet's determined to get me into every colour imaginable."

"He exaggerates. An olive green waistcoat is not every colour imaginable."

"And light trousers are the mark of a dandy."

"Just shut your trap. If you're going to have the world on a string, you have to act the part."

"Thus he costumes me, as if he were the director and the producer."

"I think I am."

"He thinks he is. I have better things to do. Mireille, it was good to see you." He kissed her cheek. "I am spending the evening with my new books." Standing up, Feuilly put on his "new" overcoat, which was rather too broad in the shoulders and too long in the arms for his small frame. "I'll see you later."

His room was cold, but he now had an overcoat that could be used as an additional blanket. He also had food, and behind one of the boards in the outside wall, his stash of coin which totalled just over a hundred francs. Ten weeks wages meant that he did not have to participate in any more jobs for that period, if he lived as he had, and at the very least, he could significantly increase his living standards and not have to work for a month.

Feuilly was uncertain as to the details, but he believed that a young man of seventeen years of age who was literate had the chance of becoming a clerk to a money lender or a lawyer, and this was the sort of job that was not only respectable, but paid far better than the factories. He could read, and he had taught himself to write, and a bit more education and attention to his language just might give him the chance to really make it out. Therefore, instead of spending his evening drinking in the warm tavern, he returned home to study.

Only the book that caught his attention was not what he had intended. The book with the etchings grabbed his attention first, and he began to read. Unfamiliar names, coupled with the most beautiful pictures he had ever seen, held his attention until the candle burned itself out. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Breughel, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian: pictures from the Bible and portraits of fancy ladies and gentlemen from ages long past. At one point, he grabbed his bottle of ink and his pen, and in the blank book he had stolen, he began to copy a part of one of the etchings, God reaching down to Adam. These were copies of great paintings, he learned from the text, and as Adam's face formed under his pen, he said a silent prayer. These men worked with their hands, but with a brush rather than a shuttle. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a way he could do the same. He looked down: the face he had made was a decent copy of the face created by the first copyist.

Feuilly told himself he would not touch that hundred francs. As tempting as it was to try his hand with a brush, a pen would do for now. Surely M. Leonardo did not paint his Last Supper as soon as he thought he might like to draw. Time and practice and patience. The candle finally went out, as exhausted as its owner. Only then did Feuilly realise that he was cold and tired. He had lived for so long on dreams that any appearance was fuel for night or day.


	6. Chapter 6

Spring came, and the season, though mild in temperature, brought rains which seeped through the roof of Feuilly's garret and brought most activity to a standstill. Soaking rains turned to thunderstorms with little warning, and action was impossible in the occasional torrential downpours. May sun was a relief, especially because it heralded the coming of summer.

Summer was an excellent time to be a gamin, and it was nearly as good to those who made their livings in similar ways. The heat and stench of Paris drove the wealthiest people into the country, along with most of their servants. The few who remained placed dust covers over the furniture and the men spent their evenings out, since they had no masters to tell them otherwise. The nights were warm enough that the prostitutes did not suffer from their constant walks, and as it was warm enough to take a few up against a wall in a convenient alley, more clients were possible in a summer's night than in the winter.

Feuilly spent his afternoons in the Luxembourg or walking along the river. In the open, it was possible to catch a breeze that could not be found in the tightly packed houses of St Michel, and thanks to Babet's connections among the old clothes dealers of the Temple, he did not look as if he did not belong. He was grateful for the acquisition of fine linen that did not hold to him roughly in the heat, and though he had initially complained bitterly of the tight trousers Babet had forced on him, their fabric was softer and lighter than the canvas he had been wearing. He continually appeared in public without a jacket, but in the July heat, he was not the only gentleman to do so, regardless of propriety. The ladies had all left the city, and those women who remained were, for the most part, not worthy of the title. Feuilly, with his tousled curls and frilled cravat, looked far more like the son of a fallen family than the gamins who were continually chased away from the fountains. In the daylight, in public, Montparnasse would not give him the time of day. And so the boy spent his afternoons alone, sitting in the gardens and reading from his books or attempting to draw the people he watched from behind a tree or hedge.

Sometime in the spring, a body had been carried out of the room next to the one he continued to rent. He had heard nothing through the wall for some time and assumed that the inhabitant had been ill and the rains had finally finished him, or her, off. He had never seen who lived there. All he knew was that the person was quiet, kept to him or herself, did not keep the same hours as Feuilly, and had a habit of letting the stove burn out. His new neighbour was a prostitute, and Feuilly was glad he now worked at night. The thought of having to rise at dawn to work even longer hours at the mill, after a night full of that din, was more than he was willing to bear. At least, unlike his previous neighbour, this one reminded him that there was an active life beyond the four walls of his room.

He had been prudent with his windfall, and as often as the thought of paints tempted him, he saved his money, and through the lean months of March and April, he had only had to go out twice with Babet, who demanded to know why Feuilly did not come more often but was never answered. The money was gone, all but five francs he kept in case of emergency. Five francs meant he would never be forced to go without a meal again, as there was always the chance of a job tomorrow.

Work in the summer was far simpler than in the winter. Stealth was still necessary, but only in the street. The number of servants left behind in those houses where the furniture was covered was never more than four, and if they had their throats cut for trying to sound an alarm, no one would notice for days, as deliveries were not even made daily in the summer. Feuilly went out once a week, often combing women's bedrooms for jewelry and trinkets that had been left with the winter dresses. He kept a stock of small jewelry for the next lean period, so he could pawn it a little at a time, rather than be forced to make a haul every two weeks once winter came again. He also managed to acquire some personal belongings: a pocketwatch, a nice set of hair brushes, and a small mirror. Mireille had had a point when she called him a dandy. While he paled in comparison to the _incroyables_ of the previous generation, he was careful of his linen, and his hair, and his speech. With care he watched as he tried to encourage his hair to grow faster, and it was not without a certain regret that he noted that for the time being, it would always look quite a mess. Though he had returned to the casual attitude and cynical speech with which he had been raised, Feuilly could no longer bring himself to speak argot. He had once spoken both the argot of the Barrière, picked up from Brujon, and the argot of the Temple, learned from Babet, but both now felt false in his mouth, the Barrière more so than the Temple, however. Only the occasional word to cloak a job was necessary, and that was the most Feuilly could do anymore. Too much reading and too much ambition kept the argot out of his speech and the edge off his voice.

Montparnasse, when they did meet at the tavern in the evenings, always had an insult waiting for him, and he stubbornly refused to absorb any of the knowledge Feuilly tried to force on him. Half an alphabet had been forced into the child's brain in half a year, and if the rest took as long, Feuilly thought he just might give up. Yet the lessons allowed him to keep an eye on the child, and he had become attached to the little boy, in spite of the tone in which Parnasse always called him a "toff".

It was a half-life he now lived, but it was better than he had survived before. A queer family of sorts had been jumbled together, with Mireille as mother, Babet as father, and little Montparnasse as brother. Feuilly was sixteen years of age, more or less, and he was apprenticed to an able hand, if he wanted to spend his life in the manner he currently made his living.

The difficulty for Feuilly was how his ambitions now conflicted. He had once aspired only to be a clerk. Now, after six months of reading and re-reading and copying every page of the book of paintings he had stolen, he wanted more than ever to be an artist. The churches of Paris had always drawn him by their beauty, and he had always wanted to be a part of it, but the more he drew, the more he thought he saw his own talent for it and the more he wanted to be an artist more than anything in the world. And yet he kept reading, and kept exchanging books with a used bookshop near the student quarter, getting his hands on every history book he could. Kings and queens and foreign lands were not just subjects to be painted - they felt as real to him as the denizens of any novel. He felt their triumphs and mistakes as if they were his own, and on the force of history, he developed vague political ideas and judgments.

Lawyers were not artists: therein lay the dilemma. His mind told him two things: first, that artists were not supposed to be a part of polite society, which meant he had a chance, and second, that lawyers, not artists, determined what polite society was and always had enough money to live comfortably. Which was more practical, he could not say.

"Was it easier when we were children?" he asked Mireille one evening at the tavern. "When we were Parnasse's age and on a hot August day, we didn't mind the shouts of disapproval that prevent us from swimming in the Seine?"

"I don't know, honey. I don't think it was ever easy. Of course, you grew up here. I had parents, and they only made things worse."

"How can parents make it worse than sleeping under a bridge and hoping for handouts from Babet?"

"Look at me, honey. I've been doing this since you were born."

"I'm serious, Mireille. You never said you had family before."

"You never asked. And I am serious. You must be what, sixteen?"

"Thereabouts, I guess."

"I was about your age when my brother had to go into the army. My father was a drunk, and I got tired of being hungry and being afraid of his temper. So here we are in Paris. I never knew your mother, but she must have come here for a similar reason. How else would you have picked up that touch of the south?"

"I don't remember her at all. I mean, I know logically she must have existed, but I don't remember anything. I vaguely have some idea of a thin woman, but if that's a memory or a dream, I don't know. I have an image of somewhere with grass and trees, but for all I know, I constructed it out of the Luxembourg. Other people have families. Who you are and what you do are based on your family. But I don't have any family."

"You're lucky in that. No one tells you what you have to do."

"I'd rather someone would."

"No, you don't. People like us, if we do as we're told, we just spend our lives in Lesage Mill."

"And if we don't, the men become thieves and the women become whores, and we live in exactly the same place, and we never have enough of what we need, much less what we want. I want to be rich, Mireille. Not for the money, as nice as it sounds. I want to do something worthwhile. I want to have a real choice, not the choice between what I've done and what I'm doing. I wish I could have gone to school. I wish I could read Latin. I want to be an artist. I want to study history. I want to see faraway lands. I don't want money, really, I just want chances, but there are no chances without money, and there is no money like that without a family, so I'm fucked every way I turn."

Mireille stroked his hair. "You're not fucked. You have more chances than the rest of us."

"Chances for what?" He felt as if he were shouting, though he had not raised his voice at all. "Chances to live like this for the rest of my life? I don't want this! I've never wanted it. I've never liked it. I don't like stealing my living, but I have my dignity, and I'll be damned if I sell that, too!" He suddenly grew quiet. "I just want to do something that doesn't feel like selling my soul."

The big woman took him in her arms, comforting him the best she knew how. "Just think how lucky you are to have a soul. That's why I love you, honey. You'll always be a good boy, no matter what you do or how you do it, because you don't let yourself become a bad boy. I've known you since you first turned up in this neighbourhood, and you've always been a good boy. You've always been an old boy. You can't be any more than seventeen, but you're a man, and you have been for years. How many boys beg their way into reading, and then teach themselves how to write? How many boys with your chances give it all up because they believe in something besides how many coins their pockets will hold? I love you, and I'm proud of you for it. So don't listen to Babet when he tells you to stop dreaming. Sometimes I wish I could still have my head in the clouds."

"I don't have my head in the clouds," Feuilly muttered. "If I did, I wouldn't be so conscious of our continual slide into hell."

"But you're different, Feuilly. Look at me. You dream. And if a bunch of women can pull down the Bastille, why can't you be a lawyer?"

He smiled a little at that. Pulling the blank book from his pocket, he asked, "Mireille, can I ask you something?"

"Always."

He opened the book to one of his own drawings, made while sitting in the Luxembourg. "Is this any good?"

She looked at it in stunned silence for a long time. It was no more than a pencil sketch of a fashionable young girl's face, outlined by her bonnet, and though rather imperfect in the nose, it was a far better and more emotional likeness than the work of many who made their living selling cheap portraits in the provinces. "I was wrong, honey. You can't be a lawyer because you're going to be an artist."

A smile lit the boy's face for the first time that day. "You mean it?"

Mireille kissed him on the cheek. "Absolutely."


	7. Chapter 7

As comforting as the re-entry to his former world had been, by October, it had begun to chafe. He had finally begun to grow taller, and his growing pains extended to his work. His tolerance weakened, and his patience followed.

One November night, Feuilly finally exploded. Claquesous was nowhere to be seen, and Brujon had been even more silent than usual. Babet had selected the job, he and Brujon had staked it out, but Feuilly had taken no part in it until that night. Something about the place gave him a bad feeling, and Brujon's refusal to look at him made him think they shared a sense of foreboding.

Babet pointed him to the gate, and Feuilly deliberately broke the silence.

"No. I don't like the look of it. There's something wrong about this place."

"There's nothing wrong with it," Babet hissed. "Now come on, open the gate."

"No," Feuilly repeated with more force. "I'm not going in there."

"Dammit, boy, you work for me!" Babet pushed him up against the fence, and before Feuilly could fully grasp what had happened, he felt a knife at his throat. "Now, you'll be a good boy and open up, won't you?"

He started to laugh. "Damn, your holiness, one would think you did own me! I'm not going in if I don't feel like it." Names were never used in public.

"I'm telling you, boy -"

"Oh, get off it, Babet!"

"Shhh! You want to get us all topped?"

"I'm not fond of hospital, all right? I'm not looking to get anyone topped, that's why I'm not going in."

"Dammit, I'll just top you myself if you don't fucking open up!"

"Careful, your holiness. You may not be prudent, but I always am. Did you really think I'd risk landing myself in the hospital? Ah, but don't think you know me as you think you do. Do you think I wouldn't come armed? Yes, I know what you think of me. Effeminate, with my books and my drawings. But kittens grow up, don't they? And a cat knows precisely when to use its claws. I'm not a fool."

Babet forced his knife even further into Feuilly's neck. He could not move his head without cutting himself, which allowed Babet to look down without giving up his advantage. Sure enough, a hint of silver glinted in the boy's hand. "The cat does have claws."

"And is prepared to use them. I'm not going into hospital, and I'm not laying down tonight, but if you don't let up, by god, I swear I'll top you myself."

"Where'd you get yourself a piece like that?"

"What does it matter? I'm not so stupid as to go around without a little protection. You're the fool who left my hands free. Did you really think I'd be afraid of you and that little knife?"

"Let the boy go," Brujon put in quietly. "I don't much like the look of the place tonight, either."

Babet glared at them each in turn but finally pulled his knife away from Feuilly's neck. "Fine. Go on. See if I care what happens to you."

"When your pocket burns enough, I'll find you," Feuilly replied, pulling away as soon as he could. He bowed low. "I suppose I shall see you gentlemen later." Before Babet could strike at him, as he appeared poised to do, he turned and ran down the alley.

Closing himself in his room, he immediately began to curse his luck. He had no desire to see Babet again in the near future, but he had run low on cash. As there was no job tonight, he would have to open up the wall and actually begin to use his stash.

What had gotten into him? Ordinarily, he would have opened the gate but refused to go in. Now, he would not even assist in what he felt would be a failure. There was probably nothing wrong with the house, and it was far from the first time Babet had been violent with him. Yet the night's situation had made him sick, and he went to bed early, debating what he should do about it.

Feuilly woke earlier than usual, early enough to hear his neighbour return from the night's work, though he did not get up for a long time. What am I going to do? he thought. I have my pride. I'll be damned if I'll give up my pride. When he rose to dress, he grabbed for an old pair of canvas trousers only to find that in nine months, they had become rather too short. That settles that, he thought. No turning back when the clothes don't even fit.

He went out only to complete the most necessary errands: to pawn a bit of his stash and provide himself with a stock of food so that he would not have to run into Babet at the tavern for a few days.

After three days of sulking in his room, however, Feuilly grew tired of hiding and subsisting on bread and cheese. He ventured out early, hoping to be able to at least eat before Babet came in. Indeed, he was nearly successful, as he was finishing his wine when a commotion at the entrance signaled the man's arrival.

"And that -" smack "- is for following me like a fucking dog! I kick dogs that follow me, you know that!" A whimper was faintly heard. "Now I paid you, so go on, dammit!" The door to the tavern flew open, and a very angry Babet stormed in. "Jesus fucking Christ, why are women so goddamned clingy?" One of the prostitutes hurried outside, and momentarily, a woman with a split lip and an eye that was turning black was seated near the door with a drink in front of her. Babet did not notice, as he had already seen Feuilly, who had been unable to escape. "The boy comes back after all!" His laugh was sickening. "No, we didn't go in, _monsieur_."

"Babet, calm down. I was just finishing dinner, and now I'll be going."

"No, you're not 'just finishing dinner'. Any time you show up here, it means you're in." As he sat down, Feuilly could smell the liquor already on him, which explained the state of the woman. "You," he pointed, "are the reason I feel like I've been fucked with a broomstick." And again, he laughed that sickening laugh.

"You're not in any state to talk about anything. I came to see if there was a decent job up, but it's apparent that no one is in any condition to work. I don't know why I came back if you are going to turn into a drunk on me."

"As if you haven't seen me get drunk before, you stupid little fuck."

"What was so important about that house? Why did Brujon not like the look of it?"

"That was an English duke or something, and you were supposed to let me in because I lost my fucking salary!"

"What are you talking about?" Feuilly asked firmly.

"You were supposed to open up. Best the little woman not know what I had going. It would offend his weak little heart. You and Brujon provide cover while I go upstairs, slit the bastard's throat. Double gig. But you blew it for me. Your nose is too good, so I'm damned if I kill you for it, since I'll need it later."

"You've branched out into murder for hire? You stupid, worthless, mindless -" He wracked his brain for the appropriate word, and nothing came to mind. "- thing! Jesus! You'll get us all locked up!"

"Blow it out your ass. You're the one who fucked me over."

"Then slit my throat for it, because no one will give a shit if I live or die. Do you ever use that thing that sits on your shoulders? Who on earth would want this English duke dead _and_ would know to come to you?"

"It was a trade, shall we say."

"A trade. Now the coppers are really onto us!"

"His life in exchange for the job."

"Oh, you imbecile! That place was made! That place didn't just have too many people at home, it was made! And you say _I_ fucked you!"

"It wasn't made."

"How do you know? You haven't used your brain at all when it comes to that house."

"It was a copper what gave me the job."

"You've sold out into contract killing for the bleeding government!"

"My permanent pass out of jail. You fucked it up for me."

Feuilly tilted his chair back and put his feet on the table. "You're drunk, and I don't believe a word you say. It's too far-fetched. I believe you're perfectly willing to kill a man, or even a woman, for a price, and to save your own skin, but why would you have tried a little highway robbery on a copper?"

"Not just a copper. The superintendent of police. Not my fault he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know how the poofs go strolling around at night, making like barnyard cocks and all that shit."

"Not that I understand your analogy, never having seen a barnyard, but yes, everyone knows when the poofs are out, preening themselves like pigeons."

"They are pigeons. Figured they'd be easy targets. No one wants to admit what they're looking for in places the prosses don't go."

"So you went out to redistribute some otherwise quite filthy currency."

"Precisely. How was I to know the big man would be out with the poofs? I just grab him from behind, like, got my knife to his throat, it's only going through his pockets that I realise the bastard is telling the truth, he does have a real police card, in glass and everything. He offers a trade - a life for a life, and money, too. Now, why should the place have been made? You didn't see how the prick was about to shit himself."

"The place was made, you're in imbecile, and you should have topped him then. Instead, you bring in Brujon with the truth, and me on half-truths, and when I actually care about my own skin, I get that knife to my own throat."

"I didn't know you'd found yourself a piece."

"I'm not stupid. Did you really think I wouldn't arm myself the first chance I got?" He pulled out the knife, which he kept in a rough attempt at a leather sheath. "Paper knife from the first job. Small, but sharp and altogether neat."

Babet tested the edge. "Not bad."

"I know." Feuilly took it back. "So don't underestimate the kitten. In any case, I piss you off then disappear, your skin is probably safe, so now you take the afternoon to beat on some poor pross."

"I only beat on her, as you say, because the bitch wouldn't let go of me when I was done. Jesus Christ, I hate women." Suddenly he caught sight of her as she tried to leave, moving slowly as if she were in pain. "The bitch is in here! Who let that bitch in!"

"Babet, stop this shit now. She's leaving. And so am I. When you are sober, we'll cast about for that next job. For the moment, your pocket can't handle the prosses any more than your temper can."

"My temper can handle anything, dumbshit."

"And you are proving it now, aren't you?" Feuilly calmly rejoined. "I'll be back tomorrow."


	8. Chapter 8

Winter came again, blowing cold and hard. It was not until the winds began to temper in March that Feuilly realised he had been back with Babet for a year. It had been too simple, he thought. His conscience continued to prick him, but he promised himself that he would quit before the age of twenty, assuming he was sixteen when he began. Since he had lost his mother at an early age, he had no recollection of when his birthday was and only a vague idea of how old he might be. He was believed to be seventeen now, so he assumed everyone else knew better than he did.

It was late in February, a night too wet to risk working, that he found himself once again in the company of Babet and Brujon at the tavern. It was late, and conversation had been meaningless, but it was warm and Feuilly had company. He hated spending wet nights alone in the dampness of his room, and in spite of arguments and insults, a certain camaraderie held the three of them together. Guelemer was set to be released in the autumn, and at that point, a fourth would be added to their party.

"I still don't see what your point is," Babet argued half-heartedly.

"Simply this: we can do whatever we like as long as no one knows we are doing it. So would you please be more careful when I'm not with you? Letting Mercier teach me lockpicking while you went about the organisation was all well and good, but you've already learned I won't be here forever, and god only knows what happened to Mercier."

"Your idea of careful seems to be not doing anything."

"My idea of being careful is not leaving any tracks and being selective as to what you take. The longer things go unnoticed, the more time we have to get a good deal. Jacquemont isn't giving me the best price. I know because I waited a few months and then took some stuff uptown. I got an excellent price on the jewelry from a real jeweler. It's more profitable to be selective. Besides, you have other trades that take care of you on the side, or can if you choose to exercise them. I don't. So kindly don't get yourself arrested because then I might be forced back to the mill."

Babet's ill-tempered rejoinder was cut off by Mireille's sudden, and sodden, appearance. "What are you doing here, bitch?"

"Shut your trap, I'm not here for you. I came looking for you, honey," she said to Feuilly.

"Is something wrong?" he asked worriedly.

"Nothing wrong at all," she smiled. "It's time you had yourself a girl. And I've found you one. A good girl for a good boy."

"Mireille, I am hardly in any condition, or in the mood, for any initiation or whatever it is you've decided I need." He pushed his hair out of his face and willed his curls to stay out of his eyes. Eventually, it would be long enough to pull back again, but for the moment, it was an awkward length, and Feuilly was starting to be convinced that it was more trouble than it was worth.

"You haven't seen her yet."

"I don't need to see her to know that she looks like you," Feuilly muttered as Mireille left to get the girl. Mireille was not a small woman, nor was she a "girl" anymore. He just knew he was about to be trained in how to handle a woman rather than be made love to.

Until Mireille returned, and Feuilly saw why she was drenched - her shawl was covering the girl she brought forward. Mireille fussed over her as she took back her wet shawl. "This is Lydie," she announced, as if she were a proud mother.

Lydie was barely more than a girl, no older than Feuilly and perhaps a bit younger. She was thin and pale, and for the moment, she looked only at the ground, trying not to shiver. Her gown was silk, but long out of fashion, with an extremely high waist and extremely low neckline exposing nearly the all of the small rise of her bosom. Her skin was clean; her dark hair was neat. When Feuilly stood and bowed to her, she finally looked up, with a small smile, showing her extremely wide dark eyes and high cheekbones. She was small: the top of her head just reached his shoulder, and her bare arms were delicate.

"Well, well, well, mummy's brought you a toy. Better use her well, boy, so mummy doesn't think you're ungrateful."

The girl drew back inside herself, and all Feuilly could do was glare at Babet. Mireille had to take matters into her own hands. "Just shut your trap, Babet. You know what? Get out of here. Go find someone else to pick on."

"Yes, let's go somewhere else. Since he wouldn't know what to do with a slut even if someone showed him, there isn't going to be much of a show here. You'll see what comes of giving him a china doll instead of a woman." The two children might well have been a pair china dolls, with their perfect features, pale skin, and unworldly delicacy.

"Get out of here. You too, Brujon."

"We're going," the bigger man said lazily. "Good luck with her, Feuilly. You're going to need it." He laughed silently as Mireille chased them away, leaving the children alone in the corner.

Feuilly finally found his tongue. He bowed to her again, his hair falling back into his eyes. "It is a pleasure to meet you, mademoiselle. I'm called Feuilly."

She flushed slightly, but made a brief curtsey to him. "I'm Lydie. Lydie Vincent."

"I didn't expect someone so pretty."

"I didn't either."

"Here." Feuilly picked up his overcoat. "It should be big enough to cover both of us, if we wear it as a cape." The girl shied away from him as he tried to put it over her shoulders. "What's wrong? Are you afraid of me?" he asked gently.

"I didn't know you were friends with - with Babet," she said softly.

"You're afraid of him." She nodded. "I'm not like him, I promise." He bent down so he was looking up at her. "I won't hurt you. We don't even have to do this if you don't want."

Her dark eyes seemed much too big for her face, and in spite of her profession, there was a childlike innocence as she gently touched his cheek. "No, I want to."

"It's not too far. We can make it both under the coat, I think." He stood up, and this time she let him arrange the coat over them both. Outside, the rain had settled into a slow, soaking drizzle that seemed prepared to continue for days. Feuilly set his hat on her head, to keep her as dry as possible, and she laughed, sounding for all the world as if they were no more than children playing dress-up.

Walking was slow, and Feuilly had to hold her close in order to keep them both as warm and dry as possible. She was warm in the crook of his arm and the contact was not unpleasant. He regretted the moment they stepped inside and the need for such close and yet innocent contact no longer existed.

Lydie seemed to find his attempts at gentlemanly behaviour amusing. Feuilly found himself blushing when she laughed as he offered his arm to help her up the stairs. Had she been a woman, as he expected Mireille to bring him, he would never have thought about proper behaviour. With this girl, he thought only of behaving as he believed a gentleman should.

Once inside his tiny room, he lit a single candle, already burned past the half-way mark, and with his back to her, quickly tried to dry his wet hair with the piece of sacking that served as his towel. "It's not much, is it?" he asked softly, his voice shaking a little as he hated to break the silence, uncomfortable though it was.

"It's not dripping," she answered, looking around.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here."

"Mireille told me. It doesn't matter. As long as you don't hit me, you can't hurt me."

Feuilly sat down in his only chair, resting his elbows on his knees. "You shouldn't be here. You're too young for this."

"I was never too young to be daddy's pretty pet, so how can I be too young for strangers?" she asked, a trace of bitterness seeping into her warm voice. She knelt in front of him. "Neither one of us is too good for this, so why don't we do what we're here for?" She started to pull his boots off, and he did not protest. "You wear gentleman's boots!" she said in surprise. "They're so soft."

"I'm sure that's what the gentleman thought who bought them in the first place. Maybe I should feel some sympathy for whatever servant has been chastised for losing them, but it isn't my fault people don't bolt their doors," he grinned.

"Always the best?"

He slowly reached out to touch the girl's face. Her skin was soft and smooth, and she leaned into his touch. "Always," he answered softly. He helped her to stand, and she slid his coat off his shoulders, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek in the process. There was little he could do but help her, as her hands were already on his neckcloth. Only when he found himself standing in his shirtsleeves did he dare start to fumble for the fastenings of her dress.

"Shhh. Just relax."

He took a deep breath and gently touched her hair, grounding himself in a safe gesture before returning to uncharted waters. This time he went slowly, finally unhooking her dress almost in surprise that he had found the tiny hooks at all. Her hands never left his body, and her lips never left his face.

The thin silk of her dress fell away from her delicate shoulders, and she pulled away in order to divest herself of the now encumbering garment. The shift she wore underneath was patched and worn, her stays mended in various ways, but she matched Feuilly for carefully covered shabbiness. The cuffs of his shirt had reached the point they could no longer be turned, one sleeve had begun to separate from the shoulder, and his waistcoat was necessary to hold his shirt together as all but one button had long ago disappeared.

"Wait." Lydie pulled back. "I'm supposed to do this right, not as if it was paid for." She quickly turned away in order to take her hair out of its careful bun, setting aside the hairpins so as not to lose them. "There," she said, shaking out her hair and turning back to him. "Better?"

Feuilly smiled. "Better." Her hair was soft, and it felt nice through his fingers. She had to unbutton the straps of her stays herself and then direct him to feel for the cord that held them together.

She helped him pull his shirt off, his damp curls bouncing with the static, before pulling her own shift over her head. On his own instinct, he pulled her naked body close to his, relishing the warmth of her skin. He softly kissed her on the lips, a little shyly at first, but on the second try, she let him linger for some time. Slowly, she moved him towards the bed and only then did she unbutton his pants.

At that point, he met her eyes with a nervous expression.

"I'll guide you," she whispered. "It doesn't matter. I'm to teach you. There's nothing to be afraid of."

He was nervous, but not terrified. As she gently guided him, he began to relax a little, but he could not help his solicitous nature. Lydie teased him with her eyes, but even to his inexperience it was obvious she enjoyed his gentle ministrations.

When they were through, Feuilly pulled her close to him under the blankets, more in awe of the fact that something so beautiful and delicate lay in his protective embrace than of what he had just done. "Will you stay the night?" he asked, gently brushing her hair out of her face.

She did not look at him. "Why do you want me to?"

He felt himself flush. "Because I like the feel of you in my arms." It was true, though it sounded strange to him even as he said it.

Lydie turned over, and in the dim candlelight, he could see that her large eyes were wet with tears. "No one has been that gentle with me in so long." She curled closer to him. "You'll keep me safe for tonight?"

Feuilly pushed his own hair out of his face and settled down next to her. "I swear it."

In the morning, it was difficult to pretend nothing had happened, and watching Lydie dress was awkward, but there was no way to hide in the tiny room. "You know I can't pay, don't you?"

"Of course. Mireille said you couldn't. It was sort of a favour, like."

"If you ever want to come again, you know the way. I can't pay, but if you ever need to feel safe . . ." He trailed off.

"You'll always be here?"

"Always."

Lydie approached him as he still lay in bed, softly pushing his curls out of his eyes. "I'll come if you want me to."

"I want you to come if you want to come."

She smiled and gently kissed him on the lips. "I'll see you around, Feuilly." Before he could recover from the kiss, she was gone.

He lay in bed for a long time, stroking the warm place where she had spent the night. Mireille wasn't a fool, he thought. There are women worth holding all night. He rolled over and went back to sleep, his dreams full of soft skinned, dark haired beauties.


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's note: In the French alphabet, the letter "Y" is referred to as "I grec", which translates to "Greek I". As in English, it tends to be a letter of little use, occuring mostly as a pronoun to replace phrases beginning with "à" and at the ends of words. Montparnasse has far more reason to dislike the letter "W", which is "double V", as it figures only in imported words, but "Y" has a better adjective with which he can play._

Spring rains drove everyone indoors again, and it was little wonder Babet had returned to sodden evenings preying on the drenched homosexuals who used the Rue de Rivoli as a meeting place. He often returned to the tavern quite late at night, soaked to the skin. Feuilly considered assault to be beneath his dignity, but as Babet had no dignity left, it was as appropriate a manner of making a living as any other. The "poofs", as Babet always called them, were unlikely to bring charges, and even if they did, the police were likely to think them complaining of being overcharged or robbed by the male prostitutes who were a part of the evening scene. They were safe targets for those who had learned the lesson presented by Claquesous' mask. Brujon waited for another housebreaking, as he preferred not to pay the price of assault or murder. The rains brought Montparnasse back inside, too, and Feuilly began the lessons yet again, determined to force some form of learning into the child's stubborn brain.

Montparnasse knew that Feuilly's presence meant education, but it also meant wine, because Feuilly was the only person who paid for him to drink anymore. He paid for his food and drink by learning his alphabet.

Each day he came in, a few more letters would be added, and only when he had said them through would Feuilly pass his wineglass and summon one of the owner's daughters to bring Montparnasse a plate of food.

"Come here," Feuilly would always have to order, pulling over a chair since the boy had grown too big to sit in his lap. An order obeyed sped up the process of posturing and pacing that would inevitably result if Montparnasse were left to his own devices. He would always try to reach for Feuilly's glass, and Feuilly would always have to guard it carefully. "Say your alphabet first."

"I know my alphabet."

"Then say it."

"Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv," he ran together quickly. "There."

"That isn't all of it."

"It's all I know."

"Repeat. W."

"W."

"X."

"X."

"Y 'I grec'."

"Why is it Greek?"

"Because it is."

"Why is there a French one and a Greek one, then? What good's the Greek one?"

"It's very useful."

"You're just saying that."

"No, it truly is. The phrase 'Il y a' There is, for example. 'Il' - I-l - 'y' - Y - 'a' - A."

"Why isn't it just 'I', then? Why the Greek one?"

"Because it is."

"It would easier to have one less of the damned things."

"Perhaps it would, but it exists. And there's one more. Just one more. Z."

"Z," Montparnasse repeated reluctantly. "Good enough?"

"Say it all the way through.

"Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw . . . x . . . Greek thing, z!"

"Good enough." Feuilly passed his wine glass over, only to watch it be drained in one gulp. "Now, you'll see what those last few look like." He pulled his blank book out of his pocket, and on the page reserved for Montparnasse's alphabet, carefully printed the last four letters of the alphabet. "W, X, Y, Z. You see? The Greek one looks different to the French one."

"I still don't see why it makes any difference. Sounds the same, doesn't it?"

"Yes, but it looks different. Now," he pulled the book back to himself, and on a fresh page, quickly printed a line of letters. "Read these to me, and you'll have your dinner."

Parnasse glared at the page. "This isn't the right order!"

"That's because you are going to read them off to me. You know they are out of order, so you know what they are."

Parnasse sighed. "P - F - C - Q - D - T - M - O - X - V - S - A - N - B - E - Z."

"Very good." Feuilly motioned over the daughter who was acting as waitress that evening, and she knew immediately, from the past month's experience, what was required.

"How much is it now?" she asked as she set the plate in front of Montparnasse.

"The whole thing," Feuilly answered for him. "Soon enough, he'll be able to pick out words."

"You have the patience of a saint."

"It's probably true. Hey, Viv, remember what you asked me?"

"Yeah." She bent down to his height, so he would not have to stand in order to keep the conversation quiet.

"Is this good enough?"

"What is that? You drawing for money now?" Brujon asked.

"It's not for money, and shut your mouth." It was a pencil sketch of a handsome young swindler who spent quite a bit of time in the tavern. "Will it do?"

"Oh, absolutely!" Viv cried, her eyes shining. "You got to let me give you something for it!"

"Parnasse's meal. That's all I'll ask."

"And you'll get yours, too, then. I insist, if you won't take money for it!"

"I'm not profiting off your little crush. You don't even know his name."

"Probably better that I don't."

Feuilly pulled out his knife and carefully cut the page from the book. "At least you have some sense."

She put it in her pocket and refilled his wine glass. "You can't let the kid drink you dry!" With a grin, she went back to the kitchen, still stroking her apron pocket.

"What else have you got in there?" Brujon asked.

"Oh good lord, give it a rest, will you? I just got myself a free meal, that's all."

Brujon grabbed the book out of his hands and ignored Feuilly's protests to start flipping through it. "Jesus, boy, these actually look like people."

"I should hope they do. Now give it back. I don't want Babet to know."

"He's got a point, saying you're going fairy on us."

"I'm not going fairy on anyone. Just don't tell him about the book, please!"

"You're leaving again, aren't you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Who draws pictures for a living anymore? Only people who already knew rich people. Notre Dame and her kin are all dead. I'm in. Just don't tell Babet about that book. He'll think I'm out, too."

Brujon handed it back. "Fine. I'm sealed."

"Parnasse, that goes for you, too."

"Wha'd'I care?" he replied with his mouth full.

"What do you care? I'll make you care, by god!" This threat, however, was delivered with a broad grin. "No one says a word. Deal?"

"Deal," Parnasse replied.

"Now, tell me your alphabet again."

"I already did!"

"I know you did. That's why I said 'again'."

"Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxgreekthingz."

"'I grec', not 'Greek thing'."

"'I grec', z. There."

"Good enough, I suppose. Brujon, tell his holiness when he comes in, if he does, that I went home early. I'll be around longer tomorrow night, and I'm in for any job he has going. I'm running short on funds."

"I'll tell him," Brujon nodded.

"Now Parnasse, you be nice to these people here, you hear me?" The boy responded with a look somewhere between pity and a glare. Feuilly laughed. "Do it for me, all right?" He kissed Parnasse on top of the head before leaving, ignoring the little boy's squirming.

Another evening gone. Idleness drags out time, and Feuilly was sick of it. Still, one gets through the dull as well as the good, he thought.


	10. Chapter 10

The group of three had returned to the tavern after staking out a job that was not quite ripe. The night had progressed to the point that few patrons still resembled anything sober. Babet was telling how he had been one of the few men in Desnoyer's who was not arrested by the great Vidocq, which annoyed Feuilly to no end. There were not enough stories to tell, and being about eight years old at the time of that particular raid, Feuilly had heard about it the day after and in every lull since.

"Would you just shut the fuck up?" he asked wearily. "We all know the only reason you weren't arrested in that raid was because you'd pissed everyone off a couple weeks before, and since you weren't on speaking terms with anyone, the 'great' Vidocq, who is not clairvoyant, didn't have anything on you at the moment. Goddammit!" He slammed his glass down. "Why did the place have to be a biscuit?"

"It's not a biscuit. What's up your ass all of a sudden? He finally speaks his own language, must be something wrong."

"A biscuit's a biscuit. Don't know what else to call it. As for trouble, I'm short on money, that's all. That's what it always is, and what it will be until the end of time."

"You can't seriously be that hard up."

"Have you seen me working as much as you want me to? No. I have other things to do with my time. And unfortunately, rent comes due in three days, and I can't pay it."

"You've never been late with it before. Model tenant," Babet mocked.

"Shut up."

"Someone's in a mood tonight," Babet informed someone over Feuilly's shoulder.

He turned around. "Mireille. That look on your face isn't good."

"Someone wants to see you, honey. She's too afraid to come in."

"Lydie?" he asked softly. Mireille nodded. "What's the matter?"

"She just wants to see you."

"What is this? His china doll wants to see him? That's a twist now, ain't it? You're supposed to play with the nice toy mummy gave you, not leave her to wander around looking for you."

"Shut up. She's not a china doll or a plaything," Feuilly replied defensively. "I'm going to see what the matter is, and there better be something going on soon."

Lydie saw him before he saw her. "Feuilly?" she asked softly from the shadows.

"Lydie! What's the matter?"

"Can I come home with you? Just - just to sleep?" "Yes. Of course. But what's wrong?"

She moved out of the shadows enough so he could see the bruises darkening the left side of her face. "I can't take being hit. You know I can't take being hit."

Feuilly very gently touched her injured cheek. "Of course you can come home with me."

He tried to offer her his arm, but she slipped her hand into his instead, squeezing tightly like a lost child. They walked the distance to his building in silence. Only as they started up the stairs did Lydie say anything. "I'm not making trouble for you, am I?"

"I promise you're not. How could you make trouble for me?"

Inside, he pulled one of his blankets off the bed and started arranging it on the floor. "Feuilly." He looked up. "No. Stay with me, please."

"I didn't mean . . ."

"I know. You're just trying to do what I want, but I can't explain what I want. Just stay with me tonight, please. I can't bear to be alone, but I can't bring myself to work, either."

"I'll do whatever you ask me to."

"Can you start by unhooking my dress?" She turned around so he could see the hooks and eyes this time.

He did as she asked, then turned to remake his bed. "This is the most privacy I can give you. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry," she told him as she quickly undressed. "I never get privacy anyway. Never did." Feuilly didn't answer, occupying himself with fixing up the poor bed as best he could. She laid a tiny hand on his shoulder, and he turned around. Her white face seemed to glow in the ray of moonlight that came through the window. "Thank you." She tried to force a smile, but it obviously pained her.

Feuilly helped her into bed, then undressed himself down to just his shirt before climbing in after her, pulling her into his arms. She lay facing the wall so as not to put pressure on her bruised face. Curling tightly against him, she grabbed one of his hands as if it were a doll, falling asleep with it pressed to her face. Feuilly could feel her crying silently, and it was long after she had stopped that he dozed off himself.

When Lydie woke around noon, she discovered that she was in bed alone. Feuilly was sitting in the window, mostly dressed, with his back to her, a book in his lap. She got up and looked over his shoulder. "What are you reading?"

He turned around. "How did you sleep?"

"Better than I expected." She kissed him on the cheek and brushed his hair out of his face. "What are you reading?"

"Euclid's Elements."

She wrinkled her nose. "Are those shapes supposed to be words, too?"

"No." He smiled. "I'm teaching myself geometry."

"Why?" She rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Because it's part of getting an education. You can't get a good job unless you're educated. So I'm doing it myself."

"Mireille said you wanted to be a lawyer."

"Maybe."

"What does this have to do with being a lawyer?"

"Everything and nothing. I've heard that if you work as a law clerk in Paris for a few years, you can pick up enough law to move out to a smaller town in the provinces and practise there. I think that's what I'd like. Comfortable, respectable existence. A little house, with an apple tree in the garden in back. My children in school and able to marry decently." He turned to look at her. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. You'd miss Paris, though."

Feuilly shrugged. "I don't miss wherever it is I'm from, so it must pass."

She looked at him in surprise. "You're not from Paris?"

"Don't think so. I think I'm from somewhere in the south. I was pretty young, so I don't really remember coming here."

"No wonder you're so sweet to me."

Feuilly blushed and looked away. "What upsets you so much about being knocked around a little? I mean, it's not exactly a great amusement, but what's so bad about something that happens so often?"

"It doesn't happen so often to me," she snapped. Sighing, she sat down on the bed. "I don't feel like talking about it. I don't like remembering home. So just - just -" She broke down in tears.

He moved to the bed and put his arms around her. "Cry all you need to. I'll always be here, I promise." Feuilly held her close and smoothed her hair until her own embarrassment and pride drove her out of his arms and into her clothes, sticking her hair pins into her sleeve, but at the door she faltered.

"I shouldn't bother you with my problems. You've got dreams of getting out of here, and somehow, you're going to do it, and you'll go places I never could."

"Lydie, I'm never going to be too good for you. You don't want to talk, but do you need to?"

She shrugged but would not look at him. "I've been a whore since I was born. There's plenty of ways you're already too good for me."

"I've been a thief and a liar since I don't know when, maybe the same amount of time. It's no different."

"But it is! You weren't born to it. Babet taught you, but me," her voice faltered again, "I was born to it."

He gently lifted her chin to make her look at him. "You weren't born to it."

"Yes, I was! Why would my father want me like that if I wasn't born a whore? My mother always said I was, didn't know why she fed me, hit me every time she caught him with me. It's not a question of what I like, or what I want, just what I am."

"So you don't like being hit."

"I don't like being hit because then I can't pretend it's my own choice anymore," she sobbed, muffled by Feuilly's shoulder. "I chose to come to Paris, but all I can do is be a whore and get beat."

He carefully extracted himself from her grip. "It isn't all you can do. It can't be."

"I can't cook, I can barely sew, I'm no good with a fire, even, and the only way paying my way here was by paying favours. My parents threw me out for getting pregnant, and I can't even stay pregnant, either! Only good thing that ever happened was losing the baby."

"Who was the father?" he asked carefully.

Lydie had withdrawn, hugging herself tightly and slightly rocking back and forth. "My father. Who else would it have been?"

"Lydie, look at me." She shook her head, continuing to stare at the floor. Feuilly knelt in front of her. "I'm here to protect you now, I promise. And you and me, we're going to dream bigger than anyone thought we could." He gently wiped her tears, but she pushed him away and stood up. "Lydie?"

"I have to go. I'm sorry, Feuilly." She ran out with her shoes in her hand, slamming the door behind her.

"People are trying to sleep, here!" cried the rough but female voice of his neighbour.

Feuilly banged on the wall. "And we're done, so stay the fuck out of our business!" he shouted back before collapsing on the bed. It had felt good to hit the wall. It would feel better to hit M. Vincent, Feuilly thought. He bashed his fist into the mattress a few times before he forced himself to calm down, sit at the table, and grab a pencil. Drawing had always soothed him. Except today, his fingers seemed capable of forming only Lydie's bruised face. He violently ripped the page from the book and flung his knife into it, sticking it to the already battered tabletop. At that point, he gave up, grabbed his coat, and went for a walk, hatless, desperate to think of anything but the story he had just learned.


	11. Chapter 11

The walk did little to calm Feuilly's nerves, though his aspect seemed flushed with exertion rather than anger. Evening closed in on him before he even considered returning home, and it was dark by the time he found his way through the labyrinth of streets in which he had been so determined to get lost.

As he rounded a corner, finally certain of his surroundings and only another turn away from the tavern, he heard the distinctive smack of hand against flesh followed by a whimper that could only have been female. He could barely make out the figures, but in the alley that cut behind the tavern, he saw a man and a woman, the woman small and cowering as the man hit her again.

"Hey!" Feuilly called. "Anything the matter here?"

"Nothing that's any of your business," the man called back. As Feuilly's eyes adjusted, he could tell that the man was not much older than he was, and the woman was of comparable age.

He took a step towards the pair. "Are you all right?" he asked the woman gently.

"Ain't none of your business," she snapped, though the pain was obvious in her voice.

"What is she, your sister?" Feuilly asked the man, taking another step closer.

"Just some dumb pross, so beat it."

Before he realised what was happening, he dealt the man a hard blow to the jaw, jerking his head back. About to punch him again, Feuilly's own jaw exploded with the pain of a reciprocating blow.

Street instincts took over. Blows were thrown and blocked, but at far from regular intervals. A fist to the stomach was followed by a swift uppercut, and time and identity lost all dimension as Lydie's face was all Feuilly could see in the woman who watched in horror, and he felt the dull thud of each blow the same as he fought to keep her father away from her.

Only dimly did he realise that the metallic taste in his mouth was his own blood, his mind was so fogged with other ideas. His opponent was bigger than he was, but he fought fair and did not yet descend to dropping him to the ground with a well placed pull of the ankle. Being the shorter of the two, Feuilly's right eye had taken a hard hit, while the other man could still see out of both of his. Blood dripped from both mouths, however, and knuckles were equally bruised and torn against teeth.

Just as the bigger man decided to put his assailant in his place, a third hand pulled Feuilly away by the hair, preventing him from falling to the ground as his opponent tried to pull his legs from under him.

He kept swinging at the air, confused by rage and blinded by tears. "Let me go! He's getting what he deserves, the filthy bastard! There's no reason for him to treat her like that!"

A thick hand smacked him across his already bruised face. "What the fuck has gotten into you, boy? She's a pross. I didn't even think you knew her. Now stop making a scene before you attract too much more attention."

Feuilly pulled away roughly, but he took a deep breath and looked up at his second assailant. "Brujon?"

"You're lucky I'm the one who found you and not Babet."

"He was beating her. How was I supposed to watch that happen?"

"You don't if you can't take it. But you leave instead of causing yourself problems. Jesus, I thought you had brains enough to keep yourself out of trouble."

"He was hitting her for no reason."

"So you hit him, and then he hit you, and Babet is checking out that biscuit tonight because it seems to be looking better. It's ripening, and you get yourself beat to a pulp just before we try to go in."

"He stopped hitting her."

"And what are you going to do? Start a fight with everyone who hits a pross? I thought you weren't keen on ending up dead. Fuck it. Come on, inside. I don't like talking about this in public."

"You don't like _talking_ in public," Feuilly muttered as Brujon pulled him inside the tavern, where their entrance was noted but arroused not comments from the patrons.

Brujon pushed him into a chair in their usual corner and motioned Vivienne over. "We'll find the money for something stronger than a glass of wine. He's pretty shook up."

"You? You were the one making all that fuss out there?" she asked Feuilly directly. "I expected better from you."

"I'm sorry, Viv," he muttered through his split lip. "Would it trouble you too much for a wet rag?"

"You'll have to pay for it, as I'm not taking back anything that's bloody!"

"We've got the money." Feuilly looked up. "I am sorry I disappointed you, Viv."

"I am, too. You know you're better than that." She swept off, leaving Brujon staring at him.

"I didn't do anything wrong. It's hardly the first time I've been in a fight."

"It's the first time you've been involved in a fight as a man, and that changes everything. What happened to being better than Babet and me?"

"I'm not, and I never said I was."

"Bullshit. You do think you're better than us. You have no right to think it, but you think it all the same. Your books and your drawings and your constant attempts to be respectable. You think you're better than us. You think you know better than us."

"Maybe it's because I do. Babet will do anything for a sous, even if it gets him in jail. You're no better. Me, I prefer to live instead of die, and I know better than to think I would survive a stint in prison."

"You would because you're just like us at bottom."

"No, I'm not. Babet beats prosses half to death, the sick bastard."

"And he pays them more for the right to do it, so don't assume they haven't been properly taken care of."

"They aren't properly taken care of if you can beat the shit out of them for your own pleasure!"

"What brought this on? Someone else been playing with your doll?"

"She's not a doll. She's a woman."

"You didn't answer the question, but that's answer enough. Jesus, what have you been told about getting attached?"

"I'm not attached."

"Here," Viv interrupted them, slamming a glass of brandy down in front of Feuilly and dropping a wet rag next to it. "Let me see your money."

Brujon dug in his pocket and pulled out a few coins. "That enough?"

"It'll do." She swept up the coins and gave Feuilly a pointed look as she walked back to the kitchen.

"Clean yourself up, boy, and quick, because it looks like we got company."

Feuilly grabbed the rag and started wiping the blood from his knuckles, but a shocked female voice distracted him from his task.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"He's been fighting. Go ahead, boy, tell your mummy what you've done."

"Hey, Mireille. I gave a guy what he deserved, that's all."

"He's loaning himself out as a protector of whores."

"I am not. But he deserved what he got."

"That was you? Oh, honey. Everyone's talking about it." Mireille took the rag from him and started cleaning up his face. "You poor thing, you got as good as you gave, didn't you?"

"Would have been worse if I hadn't been there to stop him. Would have been worse if it had been Babet, I can tell you that."

"Babet is never actually going to shiv me, no matter what you think."

"Don't be so sure. Ever hear of Legrou?"

"No."

"Associate of ours. Babet shivved him, dumped him in the river."

"You don't scare me."

"Nothing scares you, does it?"

"Not at the moment."

"Drink your brandy, let mummy clean you up, and hope people shut up about it. But Jesus, you may have cost us a job."

"I don't need anyone to clean me up!"

"Honey, is this about Lydie?"

"Do you know why she's here, Mireille?"

"Of course. And you have to let it go, because no one here is her father. Look after her, but don't do this to yourself over strangers."

"Don't encourage him."

"He doesn't need to be encouraged. He needs to be set straight."

"Which is what I'm trying to do."

"You're not doing a very good job of it."

"Just everybody shut up! I'm fine, I swear!" Feuilly grabbed the rag from Mireille's hand so she would stop fussing over him and tossed off his brandy, choking on it. "I'm going home. Just let me be." He pulled away, leaving Mireille and Brujon to continue the argument over how best to raise him. Very little of that mattered now that he was as good as a man, anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

He cursed his way home, refusing to look up at anyone he passed, even if he nearly knocked into them. Inside, he threw the bloodied rag next to the washbasin and collapsed on his bed, fully dressed.

Lydie came to his room late that night. He fumbled to light a cellar rat, refusing to use any of his precious candles for the mundane task of seeing rather than simply hearing who knocked. It sat smoking in a broken plate on the table while he opened the door, shining on the silver blade of the knife that was still lodged in the wood.

"Mireille told me what happened." She hugged him. "Thank you for the thought, even if it was stupid."

"I'm sorry. I was an ass."

"Well, now we match, don't we? I brought you something." She opened her balled fist a little shyly, showing a short piece of black ribbon. "Sit down, and I'll tie your hair back for you." Yet as soon as she made the suggestion, she blushed at her presumption.

Feuilly blushed as well, but he obediently sat down in the chair. "It's still too short to tie back, I'm afraid."

"Nonsense. Just let me try." She gently combed her fingers through his hair, pulling the curls as straight as possible in order to form a half-ponytail. "There, isn't that better? Now, you must have a washrag or something around here. Someone needs to finish cleaning you up."

"It's not necessary."

"Yes, it is. Where is it?"

"There." Feuilly pointed to the bloodstained rag he had brought home from the tavern, lying in a damp wad on the table.

Lydie carefully wetted one end of it and gently started wiping a smear of dried blood from his forehead. "I've never had anyone stand up for me before." Feuilly did not answer. "It was nice to hear about it. That someone would care enough about me to do this to himself."

"Why wouldn't you think you were worth fighting for?" he muttered. "I just wish that had been your father."

She crouched low so that they were face to face. "He isn't here, and he's never going to see me again because I'm never going back. I'll die before I go back there. You'll have a hell of a time seeing out of that eye tomorrow," she said, standing back up to rinse the rag and start working on the bloodstains around his mouth.

"It'll be fine. Isn't as if I haven't been in a fight before."

"Don't be like that. You look as if someone knocked a tooth out, all this blood."

Feuilly shook his head. "They're all still there. I think I bit my cheek, and I know my teeth caught his knuckles good. It can't all be mine."

"You're lucky. You won't be so handsome when those teeth start to go. I'll still love you anyway," she grinned.

Feuilly didn't say anything. Fights had always left him sullen because he invariably lost or was prevented from reaching a proper conclusion.

When she finished washing his face, she did her best to rinse out the rag and hang it in the window to dry. He watched her make these domestic ministrations as the cellar rat sputtered in its dish. It was not pleased to take up the strips of paper he fed it once he was able to pull his knife from the table.

"Come to bed," she ordered him when she was finished. "I'll help you sleep." She gently kissed him on the cheek that was least bruised.

He helped her to undress enough to sleep comfortably, but when he turned to take off his jacket, he felt her press against his back, and the pressure through his shirt made him think she had finished the job herself. Turning around slightly, he confirmed his initial thought. "Are you sure?"

"I want you tonight." She started to unbutton his shirt, and he was loath to resist. The smoke finally overtook the light, and it dissolved into the haze it had conjured up, leaving the room dark and full of the acrid scent of burnt rope.

Lydie fussed over his bruises, and Feuilly was glad to see that hers were only on her face. He had taken quite a beating in the fight, and their relations began a little stiffly due to his bruises. Still, he enjoyed the contact immensely, and he was glad when she fell asleep in his arms, a warm, delicate bundle to hold close all night.

When he woke, she was watching him, supporting herself on one elbow. "Did you sleep well?"

He pushed himself up and kissed her softly. "Did you?"

"I always sleep well in your arms."

"Lydie, can I ask you something? To do something, I mean. A favour." His right eye was nearly swollen shut and his lower lip seemed very fat indeed, but he could still purse his lips and draw his eyebrows together in what appeared to be worry.

"What is it?" She picked up a little of his worried expression herself.

"Can I draw you?"

"You mean now?" He nodded. "Feuilly, I hardly look presentable."

"That's the point."

"You want to draw me ugly?"

"No, that's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean."

He sighed. "That is what I meant."

"You can't even see. And why on earth would you want to draw me like this?"

"Because I do. Because dammit, there has to be some record of this. Because you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen, and you'll let me draw you," he tried to add charmingly, gently running a hand along the smooth, bare skin of her hip. "Naked," he was forced to add, in an effort at verity.

"Naked? Bruised face and naked? Feuilly, what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with me. Come on, Lydie. Please?"

"Why? Just tell me why."

Feuilly sighed. "I read too much. I think too much. I want to be an artist. And I want to stand art on its head." He got out of bed, forgetting his nakedness as he crossed the room to grab his book of art from the table. "Look at this." He motioned her over, pawing through the pages one-handed to a copy of a reclining nude. "I want to draw you like that, just as you are, just as this place is."

"But it won't be pretty. I'm not like this lady, and this place isn't worth a painting."

"Yes it is. That's exactly the point. Durer drew skeletons, so why shouldn't I draw you right here? Do the men who keep painting pictures of Christ really think he visited poor people in such nice houses? Look at this one." He turned to another picture. "Or this one - this one proves exactly what I mean. Here." He turned to yet another page, this one a still-life where even in the etching it was clear that much of the subject matter was past the point of being ideally edible. "If the Dutch two hundred years ago were painting food that was past its prime in order to make a statement, why can't I make a statement by painting you? I can't afford to do it now, but I can draw you and have something to work from when I can afford the paints. I want to do something important, and this will be important. Will you let me?" His voice was nearing hysteria.

"Feuilly," Lydie started.

"Don't do that! Don't say 'Feuilly' like everyone else does, trying to talk me down, disappointed that I want more than this!" he cried, waving his arm in a broad gesture. "More than this room, more than this life! Maybe even more than this city!"

"I thought you wanted to be a lawyer in the country," she told him, thoroughly confused.

"I want to be anything I can be. Oh, what the fuck is the point after all?" He collasped at his table, his head in his hands. "Just get dressed and go."

Lydie bent down so he would be forced to look at her. "No, you're the one who needs to get dressed so you can tell me what to do. I've never been an artist's model."

"You don't have to."

"It's important to you. Besides, who's ever going to see it? It'll happen when you're famous," she tried to cover quickly, "and then no one will ever recognise me, right?"

"Of course." He did not even seem to notice the possible derision of her first question.

She grabbed his pants off the floor for him and sat back down on the bed. "You'll tell me what to do?"

"I'll even put you there myself." His attempt at a grin was obviously forced, but his eyes had lost much of their sullen expression as the excitement of being allowed to draw took over from the previous night's anger and disappointment.

He dressed himself quickly while she covered herself with a blanket against the early morning chill. They rolled both blankets and his overcoat into a thick pad to cushion her as she leaned against the wall, mimicking the position of the woman on the divan. She kissed his cheek, and he tried to reciprocate by kissing her neck gently. "Ow," he winced, as the pressure was greater on his lip than he had anticipated. "It's nothing," he responded to her worried look. "I don't know how to thank you for this."

"I'd do anything you asked me, Feuilly. If it was for you, I'd do anything."

"Don't keep saying that. Please. Just be quiet and let me draw."

She frowned but kept her peace. Feuilly started sketching furiously, but he never seemed satisfied. The anger he had pushed down began to rise to the top, until he threw his pencil across the room. "Fuck it! Just fuck the whole thing!"

"Feuilly?"

"Just get dressed. Goddammit." He refused to look at her. "I should have known it was pointless."

Lydie sat up straight. "It isn't working?"

"No, it's not working," he responded sarcastically. "Can't see out of this fucking eye. No money for rent, can't draw, can't work, I'm just completely fucked."

She threw her shift over her head before approaching him. "How much do you owe?"

"Fifteen for the month. I have three. The books all together might be worth ten."

"When's it due?"

"Day after tomorrow. And if I can't draw, I sure as hell won't be working before then. Can't bloody see."

Lydie pulled her dress from the floor and extracted a small pouch from the pocket. "Well, I suppose it's time to see what we've got."

"What are you doing?"

"I share a room with three other girls. No room for you there if you're tossed out of here. If I get a little behind, they can help cover me. Someone's got to look after you." She emptied her pouch onto the table. "We've got five francs and three sous. And something will turn up in a couple of days, when the swelling on that eye goes down."

"I can't take your money, Lydie."

"I want you to take it. Three francs. Take it. That's all I ask. Let me help you."

"Look at this. It's over. I've screwed myself to the bone." He picked up his art book. "I sell off the future in order to keep a roof over my head. Isn't it what we're all stuck doing?"

"You'll have something turn up, and then you can buy your books back." She wriggled into her stays. "It's a pawnshop, not the end of the world."

"Not for you, maybe."

"It's only until something turns up, Feuilly." She threw her dress over her head, hooking the back herself, with difficulty, but it was evident he was too distracted by his own misery to help her. "You know it's only for a few days."

"Just go home."

"Fine." She swept a handful of small change back into her pouch, leaving him the three francs she had promised. "I'll see you around, won't I?"

"Not if I get tossed out."

She sighed. "You won't be tossed out. I'll come by in a few days."

"Don't bother."

"I'll come by when you stop feeling sorry for yourself over nothing." She dropped the pouch into her pocket, slipped on her shoes, then gathered her stockings and gaiters from the floor. "Good morning." She shrugged when he refused to answer and left him to brood in silence.

Only when she had gone did Feuilly realise she had left the three francs, in spite of his insistence. With a sigh, he pocketed the money. The art book had to be worth the most, he thought. So much for keeping something that lovely for himself. Nothing was going as he had intended when he left the mill. "So much for planning ahead," he muttered as he gathered his books for the trip to the pawn shop.


	13. Chapter 13

The August heat never dissipated, even at night, from the tiny room at the top of the house. The dingy windows only served to help the sun find entry, not to hinder it. Feuilly woke to find himself nearly falling out of the narrow bed while Lydie, still half asleep, tried to cling to the wall. It was simply too hot inside to share a bed, even without garments or bedclothes of any kind. He tried to retrieve his right arm, on which she slept, with as much care as possible, but the movement woke her nevertheless.

"What time is it?" she asked as she rolled over to face him, finally freeing his arm.

He dug in the pile of their clothing flung across the chair until he unearthed his waistcoat. A bit more fumbling, and the watch was finally to hand. "Almost twenty minutes past one." The case had taken a beating on both sides, fracturing the crystal and rendering it nearly worthless to the pawn broker, but for the moment, it still ran.

"So early?" She sighed. "It's too hot to sleep."

"That it is. What say we head to the Luxembourg and try to catch a bit of the breeze, assuming there is one? I'll even take you to luncheon, milady," he grinned.

"And I'll be picked off right away for wearing a ball gown in the afternoon."

"You have a dress for day, don't you?" She nodded. "We'll head to your place so you can change clothes. You realise I still don't know where you live." He threw a shirt over his head, examining the cuffs sadly as he buttoned them.

"That's because there's never been any point. Too many people, not enough space." Lydie pulled her shift over her head. "Imagine if you had to share this place. We rotate who gets the bed and who gets the floor. It's bigger than this, and we have a stove, but it's still four people in a room that was meant for two at the most." She pulled her stays as tightly as she could by herself and tied off the string. "So not really any point in taking you where there isn't any privacy. How did last week turn out?" she asked from the depths of her dress as she pulled it over her head.

"Better before I tried to colour it," he replied in disappointment, buttoning his waistcoat. "I'm still learning how to mix and shade and not make it look too fake." He pulled a sheet of paper from between two books. "You're not orange."

She giggled. "And the blanket isn't that colour green. I'm not sure the blanket can even be called green. But is it supposed to look real?"

"I don't know. But it can look more real than this. At least it didn't bleed too much this time. I'm getting better, I suppose."

"Hook me up?" She turned around, and he complied. "You'll be an artist yet, Feuilly. You draw as well as in that book. I still can't believe you got it back."

"I can't, either. Must be the most expensive thing I've ever owned. I am never cutting my rent that fine again. That book represents a month of savings."

"We've been doing well for the moment, haven't we? You finally got your paints; I got me a new dress. And Marthe is helping me with my sewing so I can afford a new wrap this winter."

"It's been a good couple of months." He brushed at his hair furiously. "I just pray it lasts." He grabbed his hair back into a ponytail and passed her the brush so she could fix her own hair while he finished tying his. Then he poured enough water into the basin for them both to wash their faces.

"You're starting to get a bit of a moustache," she told him as they dried their faces with the piece of sacking that served as a towel.

"I'm also outgrowing these trousers and this coat. Next few jobs are going to mean getting myself a new wardrobe, I think."

"It's too expensive to keep growing."

"Tell me about it. I didn't count on getting tall."

Lydie carefully hung the towel and wash rag on their nails on the wall. "Put on your coat if we are going to pretend respectability. Even if I no long have a bonnet."

He did as he was told. "When you were a kid, did your parents let you run around naked in the summer when it was this hot?"

"No. People with parents are more civilised than you gamins."

Feuilly held the door for her. "I had parents. If you count Mireille and Babet."

Lydie wrinkled her nose. "I don't know how you can stand working with M. Babet. He's so - so -"

"Lacking in any redeeming qualities whatsoever?"

"C'est ça."

"I can't disagree." He followed her down the stairs. "He has kept me fed and clothed for the best part of ten years, however, so forgive me if I keep up the relationship a little longer."

"I didn't mean you should quit if you don't want to."

"I know. I'm getting out of this mess when I can. I just have to be able to make more than ten francs a week in order not to starve. I'm not fourteen anymore."

"We'll work it out somehow. Right here, then down that street on the left," she pointed. "All the way at the end, top floor."

"How long have you been living this close?" he asked, just barely avoiding stepping on a rat which had chosen an inopportune moment to cross the road.

"Year and a half, I guess. Mireille helped me find some girls to go in with."

"I think she wanted you for me the moment she saw you."

"We're a good fit, aren't we?"

Feuilly shrugged. "Better than some real marriages, I daresay."

The room was larger than Feuilly's, but it was difficult to judge how much so. One woman, older than the rest and very thin and pale, was sitting at the dingy window, a needle flashing in the light as she worked the buttonholes of a new linen shirt, the table piled high with its mates. One young woman was sprawled in the bed, while two others shared the pallet on the floor.

"What's Alice doing here?" Lydie asked the woman quietly.

"Got thrown out again, and since you weren't coming home, Caroline brought her in. Is this your gentleman?" The needle never stopped.

Lydie nodded. "Wait in the hall while I change?"

Feuilly acquiesced gladly - the room was crowded enough without him. Lydie reappeared in a moment, dressed in a blue printed dress, the design nearly faded to oblivion, the waist high enough it must have been more than ten years old.

"A picnic in the park, milady?"

"How kind of you to suggest it, my lord," she giggled.

"So did I pass muster?"

"Indeed you did."

"I do not know what we should have done had I not," he joked.

On the way to the Luxembourg, they stopped to buy a bit of bread and cheese and a few apricots, making a picnic packet of Feuilly's worn handkerchief. The sun was high and strong, leaving very little shade. What shaded benches there were had already been taken by earlier arrivals, so a patch of grass under a tree, which at this stage of summer was composed of far more dirt than grass, had to suffice.

"I should have brought my sketchbook. You look lovely in this light."

Lydie tossed an apricot pit at him. "And I don't in any other light?"

"I'm used to seeing you in much dimmer light, that's all." He picked up the pit. "You think I could grow an apricot tree? They grow on trees, don't they?"

"Yes, they grow on trees. Don't be such an idiot."

"I've never seen one! I'm serious. You think I could?"

"Where, in your room?"

"Now you're the one being an idiot. In the Luxembourg."

"Then it wouldn't be yours, would it?"

"That's not the point. It's the closest I'm going to get to creating anything worthwhile."

"God created it."

"But I decided this tree, this spot. God didn't decide that. God created man, but man decides who becomes worthy of being drawn or sculpted. I can't get a damned watercolour worked out, but even if I could, what use would it be to me or anyone. What's so wrong with a tree?"

"It'll get knocked down before it ever bears apricots. Feuilly, pretty things aren't useful. You know that. What's got into you?"

He tossed the pit as far as he could in the direction of a middle class couple, slightly older than they, apparently on the same errand. "Look at us, and then look at them. That's all that's got into me. I want to do something good and right for once."

Lydie stood up. "Come on, let's walk." Feuilly stood reluctantly. "You'll do great things some day if you're so determined."

"I just want to do one good thing in my life."

"You already have." He looked at her in confusion. "You've done good things for me. You treat me well, and you love me. Don't you?"

"Of course I care for you."

"Then see, you've already done one good thing in your life. Which means more will come."

As they strolled past one of the fountains, Lydie quickly looked away and started laughing.

"What?" She pointed towards the fountain. "What?"

"Just look!"

He turned and swore he had gone back ten years. A group of three naked gamins were playing in the water, splashing passersby, and making a general nuisance of themselves. And one of them looked much too familiar. "Is that . . . Parnasse!" he shouted.

The little boy turned to look at him and made a rude gesture upon realising who had called his name.

"Dammit, I can't tell him to get out of there. God knows I've done it enough in my day, and this is easily the cleanest I've ever seen him."

"But you want him out of there, don't you?"

"I'd like it if he would act with some sense. And on a hot day, it is sensible to play in the fountains, I know. When you're a child. Maybe I'm just jealous that he can still do that," Feuilly smiled.

"He'll grow out of it soon enough. If he embarrasses you that much, we should just move on. I thought you'd find it amusing." She was still having a hard time not laughing.

"And so I might have. I guess I'm just not in the mood."

"I'll take you out of the mood you're in." She pulled him down the path, away from the fountain and the gentleman who was now berating the boys but having no effect on their behaviour whatsoever.

They chatted idly, Lydie finally pulling a smile out of him, until they came around to the fountain again. Two policemen had arrived by this time, and Feuilly's smile quickly disappeared as he saw one of them had Montparnasse by the shoulder. He ran over, Lydie trailing behind him.

"What's going on here? Parnasse, where are your clothes?" he asked, his voice rising in a carefully orchestrated panic. "What has my brother been doing, officer?"

"This thing belongs to you?" the policeman asked, looking Feuilly up and down. Lydie had finally caught up to them, her hair falling out of its pins.

"He's my brother," Feuilly answered evenly. "Parnasse, where are your clothes?" The boy gave him a sullen look. "I mean it. Where are your clothes?" He pointed to a pile of rags, where all the boys had thrown their clothes in together. "Lydie, take him and make sure he gets dressed. I'll talk to the policeman."

"You don't tell me what to do."

"Yes, I do. If you don't get dressed right now, I'll leave you with the officer and he'll pack you off the navy. Is that what you want? We're not talking Les Madelonettes here. I can't get you out when you change your mind. Now get dressed."

Lydie bent down to his height. "Come on, Parnasse. It'll be ever so much nicer with your clothes on."

The boy sighed and tried to pull away from the officer in order to follow, but the policeman was not so easily pacified. "Why do you call him 'Parnasse'?"

"Because it is his name," Feuilly replied. "His mother was quite a romantic."

"Thought you said he was your brother."

"He is. My half-brother."

"Who's the girl?"

"My half sister. Her name is Lydie. Admittedly not as bad as Parnasse, but I suppose my stepmother had to work her way up to it."

"What's your name?"

"Feuilly. Vincent Feuilly."

"She doesn't look like your sister."

"I told you, she is my half sister. My mother died giving birth to me, and my father remarried quickly." The officer still did not look convinced. "My father died about four years ago, and my stepmother followed him last year. We've been in the city for about nine months, but there is no controlling Parnasse. I try, but it's hard when I work such long hours. He's not a street heathen. He knows how to read and write - we've taught him ourselves. Please, monsieur. We do our best with him." Feuilly allowed his voice to rise in a threatening manner as he addressed Parnasse. "And he will not be running off again any time soon."

The officer regarded the three of them carefully. After what felt an eternity, he pushed the boy at Lydie. "Get him dressed and get him out of here."

"Come on, Parnasse." He let her take him by the hand and pick through to find which rags were his.

"I don't know how to apologise, monsieur. It's a difficult city. We're barely making ends meet as it is, and we can't afford school fees for him."

"Keep an eye on him," the policeman told Feuilly roughly. "If I catch him doing that or anything of that nature again, I won't be calling on you to return him."

"Fair enough. It is very kind of you to allow us a second chance, monsieur." Feuilly bowed politely. The policeman snorted and stalked away, his partner having corralled the other two children.

Lydie had finally coaxed Montparnasse into his clothes. "Tell Feuilly thank you. He got you out of a lot of trouble."

Parnasse muttered something unintelligible. Feuilly smacked him in the back of the head. "Don't you ever do that again, do you hear me? Do you really think I'm going to be around forever to bail you out of every scrape you get into? I know, you think you're tough, you think a month in Les Madelonettes will teach you how to do all sorts of things. You wouldn't be so tough when they packed you off to the navy and you fell off the bloody ship!"

"I could have slipped the rozzer," Parnasse grumbled.

"Feuilly did a very nice thing for you, lying to the rozzer like that."

"Oh, hell, there's nothing to be done with him. If he's determined to not have any sense or any respect for himself, he'll get the stretch in prison he wants so badly. I don't know why I wasted my breath on you. Do you have any idea the somersaults my head was doing, trying to come up with a credible story? I even ran out and had to give him my name and Lydie's combined! You think I'd have done that if I didn't have to? You never tell any truth when you're lying through your teeth to a copper! Don't get yourself into any more messes around me, got it?"

"I got it. Jesus. You didn't have to bail me out."

"Yes, I did. Someone has to look after you, whether you like it or not. You and Lydie, you're practically the only family I've got." Feuilly fished in his pocket and pulled out a sou. "Now take this, get far away from here, and get something to eat."

"Fine."

"And tell him thank you."

"Thank you," Parnasse muttered before running off, clutching his sou.

"You meant that, didn't you? That we're your family."

"Don't have any other family. You, Parnasse, and Mireille are it."

She kissed him on the cheek. "And I'm proud to be part of it. Is he going to be all right?"

"He'll manage. We gamins always do."


	14. Chapter 14

The October night carried a warning of winter's chill. Thick clouds raced across the sliver of moon, sometimes lit from within, sometimes blocking the faint rays altogether. It was a difficult night for work, but work had become necessary. October had been alternately wet and very clear thus far, the brilliant moon making it difficult to stay out of sight, the heavy rains making it difficult to move about. Clouds still accompanied the waning of the moon, but the rain held off.

Feuilly was nearly shaking - entry this time was quick and dirty because there was a bolt across the front door. The little band had already been chased around the corner by the footsteps of the patrol, and they needed to get inside by the time he came around again. The house had no access to the rear garden except from inside, therefore entry had to be from the front. Feuilly carefully applied the glue to the windowpane; Babet smoothed on the paper and held it while the glue set. Then Brujon, with a hammer encased in rags, broke the window. There was a soft crack, but no tinkle of glass or harsh bang from contact. Babet pulled out the broken area, then Brujon gave Feuilly a boost so he could undo the latch at the top of the window and climb in. Brujon was too big to follow, so Feuilly first had to open the front door so the two men could enter. When the patrol came around again, he heard nothing and made no careful examination. It was nearly two in the morning on a cold, damp October night, and if there was no sound, there was nothing to worry about.

When they were certain he had passed, they quickly went to work. This job was necessary. Rent was coming due. The weather had prevented them from working. The rain had even prevented Babet's jobs on the side, since few people lingered in the streets. Feuilly was not about to lose his room and be forced into one of the common lodging houses, full of lice, noise, and other people. Within ten minutes they had grabbed what they could from the two front rooms and were back on the street, the door bolted and window shut. The patrol took twelve minutes - they had spent three nights timing him exactly, with Feuilly's broken watch.

He knew the job had been sloppy, but rent would be paid, and that was enough for now. There was an excitement here, knowing you were only minutes away from being spotted and yet would never be spotted because you were smarter than the patrolman. No other work Feuilly could think of required so much energy or gave the same pleasure.

They nearly dashed around the corner, heading for the nearby mews where they could wait for the patrolman to pass again. The mews was dangerous, because horses never slept soundly, but it was the most convenient place to wait out the next few minutes.

Feuilly held his breath as footsteps approached, and he did not let it out until the footsteps had turned the next corner. As he hefted his bag to his shoulder, a pair of candlesticks fell together with a sharp metallic "clink". He froze. A horse made a slight movement, but no lights appeared, and Babet motioned for them to move. They crept along, the opposite direction of the patrolman's beat, until a voice stopped them.

The three men stopped short, but Feuilly was the last to face the newcomer. He was short and rather round, balding. He wore an open shirt, hastily thrust into a pair of dark trousers, with a dressing gown over the whole thing. They were nearly in the shadow of the Church of St Paul and St Louis, at an hour too early to be covered by early morning carters on the Rue de Rivoli. "You came out of the little rue St Louis," the stranger announced. He kept his distance from the three miscreants.

No one replied. Babet and Brujon looked at each other; Feuilly was ignored. Silence was essential - a school connected to the church just across the street, and the boys could be nearly as wakeful as the horses.

"I saw you. You woke the horses." Again, no one replied. The little man took a step closer. "I'll shout for a constable, I will."

He did not stand a chance. In the blink of an eye, Brujon had him on the ground, while Babet held a knife to his throat. "Come here, boy," Babet called softly to Feuilly. "You've got the rope."

Feuilly pulled the length of rope from his bag and approached cautiously. "What do we do with him?"

"If you make one sound, this knife will slit your throat." Babet turned to answer Feuilly. "The river. Hold the knife so we can tie him."

Feuilly was shaking, but he did as he was told. The heft of the knife helped to steady his nerves, while the activity around him was reassuring. They did not cut the rope; instead, they used the length of it to bind his hands to his neck. If the man struggled, he would choke himself.

"Get him up," Babet ordered. "Boy, keep the knife. You, if you make a sound, or if you try to run for it, the boy here will slit your throat. And if you think he wouldn't, you wouldn't be the first to make that mistake."

Brujon collected the bags so that Babet and Feuilly had both hands free to march the stranger down to the Quai des Célestins where they could slit his throat and dispose of his body easily, at enough distance from the police post at the Place du Châtelet to avoid observance.

The man was middle aged, unused to exercise, and sweated furiously even in the cold night air. He trembled, Feuilly assumed with fear, and when they avoided a lamppost, the reflected light showed tears streaming down his face. If not for the strict silence the three thieves observed, Feuilly would have snorted in contempt for the weak little thing, not even worthy of the appellation "man".

If I were on my way to the gallows, as I may be someday, I would not weep like an infant, Feuilly thought. Die like a man. You are old enough to have served with the Emperor, no wonder his armies failed in the end. It has not been ten years since Waterloo. You are old enough to have been at Austerlitz! And this is how you die? You disgust me. Your stench disgusts me. Your fear, your tears, your dragging feet all disgust me.

Their steps slowed as they neared the quai. Brujon and Babet scanned the darkness for strangers, while Feuilly kept watch over the prisoner. The houses and shops of the quai were dark, and the windows of the old palace, now abandoned, glinted as if they knew they were about to witness another murder. The man whimpered.

"Silence," Feuilly whispered sharply in his ear.

The man obeyed, though his tears increased. Brujon motioned them forward, but they soon stopped again, huddled against the wall along the river, hoping not to be seen by whatever was moving in the darkness ahead. The man was suddenly still. He had stopped breathing in order to listen as they did for whomever or whatever might approach. Suddenly he inhaled quickly.

Feuilly's instincts were too quick for the poor man. His severed voicebox could only make a final gurgle as the blood rushed from his throat. Feuilly's arm was soaked in red, completely ruining his coat and shirt, but Brujon and Babet remained clean. Whoever was in the street turned away from the river and did not pass the trio and their victim.

Babet let the man drop to the ground. "I'm sorry," Feuilly whispered. "He took a breath and I panicked."

"You did good work," Babet reassured him. He motioned to Brujon. "Take those down to the bridge, hide them in a corner, then come back. The boy isn't strong enough to help with the body."

Brujon did as he was told while Babet went through the man's pockets. They were empty. He was as much a shadow as they were, and evidently not the owner of a house near the one they had robbed. His shirt was far from new and the hem of his trousers was frayed. The dressing gown was also of indeterminate age, though in better condition than the rest of his attire. Only his boots were any good, and Babet removed them to get a better look. He silently offered one to Feuilly, who shook his head. His boots would last another year, he hoped, and these seemed too short in any case. Babet simply set the boots aside as Brujon returned.

"Take his arms. We'll get his feet." The three hoisted the body as best they could, but Babet soon dropped his leg. "I think we're dripping blood." Accordingly, they slashed the dead man's shirt and dressing gown, then Feuilly went back to wipe the paving stones as Babet bandaged the man's neck to contain the blood. Their crabwalk began again. From the Pont Marie, a ramp led down to the bank. They would simply toss him in, and the current would carry him downriver to be found by the early boaters bringing produce up from the nearer villages in a couple more hours.

Once the body was gone, Feuilly washed as best he could in the river, though nothing could help the pale yellow coat that now had one very dark sleeve. He was forced to throw it into the river as well, wrapped around a brick Brujon found in a rubbish pile along the wall. The shirt was little better, and Babet helped him rip off the offending arm, eliminating the last piece of evidence. Feuilly took Babet's coat with the promise it would be returned when he had replaced his own. They each retrieved their earnings from the night, Babet keeping the dead man's boots, then parted company.

His part of Belleville was a long walk from the river, one Feuilly usually did not mind but tonight weighed heavily on him. His thoughts did not run away from him, but they did make him unusually jumpy. Movement to the markets would begin in a couple of hours, and he felt safest when alone. His mind remained on his surroundings, carefully listening, carefully watching. Several times he shrank into the shadows as he thought he heard a sound outside his own cautious breaths. Only after he crossed the finally finished canal did he relax at all. The movement beyond the barrière was not of the sort that would question his errand, as they were on similar business.

Alone in the pitch blackness of his room, Feuilly collapsed on his bed. The prostitute next door had one final customer, based on the sounds that penetrated the thin wall. He pulled off his boots and curled up in the corner, hugging his knees.

I killed a man, he thought. I killed a man. And I was calm about it. I do not care that he is dead. I do not care that I killed him. He made his death necessary, and I only wish he had waited until we were in a position to toss him into the river. The blood on the pavement will be noticed at dawn. He will be missed. Perhaps he was someone's coachman, and he will not come down to prepare his master's carriage in the morning. The maid who lights the fire in the study at dawn will feel the chill and see the curtain fluttering before she even notices what was taken. All will be discovered at dawn. And I am calm.

He shivered. Everything must happen at dawn, he thought. I am lucky to have a second shirt, so that no one will wonder what happened to the one I wear. I will tear off the other sleeve and cut the seams so that it will serve as a washrag and a towel. I will slit the seams and no one will pay attention to what that discarded bit of cloth once was. I will sell my wares at dawn. I will be waiting for Jacquemont to open his door. I will take what he gives and pray that it is enough. I will venture into the Temple. I will buy the first coat I may. And I will be home again before the sun has fully crossed the horizon.

He stood up and felt for a cellar rat and his matches. Under its smoky light, he changed his shirt, shred what remained of it, and checked the time. It was after three.

The sounds next door had stopped. He paused and listened for the client to leave. The wait seemed interminable, but after a couple of minutes, the door opened and shut, then footsteps came down the hall, disappearing down the stairs. The prostitute's bed creaked a little as she settled down for the night. Dawn would come after six. He had to be at Jacquemont's door at dawn.

He put on Babet's coat, blew out his cellar rat, and lit a candle. Philosophy tonight, I think, he said to himself. He sat down and opened an old copy of Plato's _Republic_, but the words slipped through his brain as they would a sieve.

I killed a man. And yet I do not cry. I do not shake. I do not even tremble in the slightest. I killed him, not to save my life, but only so that I would not go to prison for a few years. I might have survived prison. I doubt it now, but perhaps it would be possible. I killed him so that I might avoid discomfort. And I do not care. I feel nothing for the man or for what I have done.

He suddenly paused in his thoughts to whisper aloud, "And so I have become Babet." He shivered violently, swallowed hard, and turned back to Plato. Something had to occupy the hours until dawn.


	15. Chapter 15

It was late, but still a cellar rat sputtered in its dish. Feuilly crouched in the corner, waiting for the banging at the door to cease.

"Come on, boy, I know you're in there! Where the hell is my coat?"

He sighed with relief. The voice was just Babet. He opened the door, but the older man glared at him in anger. "You said you'd bring it back when you got a new one. You've had all day."

"I don't like going out." Feuilly handed him the borrowed jacket, which Babet quickly slipped on. He had no other.

"What, you're afraid of the coppers? They don't know any of us was involved."

"I hope to keep it that way. Jacquemont noticed I was in awfully early today."

"You have a problem with that?"

"If the police search the pawnshops, which they will do, they'll find what we took. The murder will be connected to the robbery once the body has been identified. Jacquemont will remember that I was in awfully early this morning."

"Jacquemont knows how to keep his mouth shut."

"Then with luck, it will blow over soon."

"How long are you hiding out for?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You don't come to the tavern. I see a stock of food on your table there. You don't answer your door."

"I'm not hiding out. I'm simply being safe."

"Safe. The coppers ain't gonna bother ya."

"They assuredly won't if I lay low for a while."

"He wasn't important. They aren't going to care who killed him. Don't tell me that damned conscience of yours is acting up again."

"You think I care that he's dead? I'm trying not to end up in jail. Maybe you feel you can do a stint, or Brujon can, but I don't feel up to it. So forgive me for playing it safe. You do still want your lockpick, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I just don't want to see you turn soft again."

"I'm gonna lay low for a week. Any job that comes up after, I'm in for."

"That a promise?"

"You have my word."

Babet left him to face the night alone. The day had been nerve-wracking. Every sound seemed to Feuilly to be a policeman coming for him. He had been able to conduct his errands without suspicion, he believed, and he had even acted quite pleased with his new blue coat, even if the buttons were tarnished, but he hurried about his business as quickly as possible. He disliked being seen. He was certain that someone knew, someone suspected that he did not look quite right. And while no one spoke to the police voluntarily, it would only be a matter of time before someone mentioned him in order to keep the police off his own back.

Feuilly did not sleep at all that night. The prostitute next door seemed too busy to him. Every customer seemed louder than usual on the stairs but quieter than he should be in the bed. His cellar rat burned itself out, and he lit another. But then he thought it could be seen under the door, so he blew it out. He put the latch on, cringing at the minute scratch it made, certain that the sound had echoed down the hall. Huddling in the dark, he watched the window for the first rays of morning.

He relaxed at dawn. If they had not come that night, perhaps they did not know. Fog came with the early morning, and the half light was more comforting than anything had yet been. It was not so heavy as to obscure the yard or the buildings the other side of it, but it muted the colours and shapes as a blanket mutes sound. He fell asleep at last, the yard clearing bit by bit.

When Feuilly woke, it was well into afternoon. No dreams had disturbed his sleep; no person had come to speak with him. He was hungry. Since the job, his stomach had seemed to contract so that he had eaten nothing. Now he was ravenous, but he carefully divided out his daily ration, and though unsatisfied, he refrained from touching the rest of his store. He had lived on short rations before.

No one came to disturb him. He was alone with his thoughts. Finally, he attempted to reason through his distinctly uncomfortable situation.

He wore nothing new, nothing very fine, Feuilly thought. The only thing worth taking was the boots, and I have seen better in the Temple. He was not wealthy. He must have worked for the owner of one of those houses. He did not labour for that owner, however, because he seemed to breathe so hard and sweat so much. Following them had been an effort. So he was not a gardener. We woke the horses. That's it. We woke the horses. Would he even have been missed in the morning? Maybe he drove the master. Maybe the master went nowhere until afternoon. He did not belong to the same house that we robbed. We were not in that mews.

I wonder how deep I cut him. The knife slid in so easily at first. I forced it. I made sure he could not cry out. What will the police think? Perhaps he drank. Perhaps he gambled. If he had enemies, why should they even connect his death with the burglary? But that would be too easy. No one is so lucky as to accidentally kill a man other men wish dead.

How do the police work? How much do they talk to each other? If he were missed in the morning, would the master even go immediately to the police? Or would he think his coachman had run off? How do masters think of coachmen? Was he even a coachman? We did not put the body very far out. It must have washed up within hours. Can they tell exactly when and where he was put in the water? Corpses bloat in the river. I've seen them. They get stuck at landings and they float and they look very round. I wonder how round he looked when they found him. He was round already. I wonder how far he got. Maybe he floated right past the prefecture of police. Or maybe he got caught on the Pont Marie. If he got stuck on the Pont Marie, maybe the police will think he went in further east. They will wonder what he did further east, with his dressing gown and no boots. They would not even think to talk to the other police who are investigating the robbery. I had no blood on me when I spoke to Jacquemont. The take had no blood on it. Perhaps I shall be quite safe from this mistake. Yes. There are more ways for the police to not connect the robbery and the murder than there are ways for them to connect the two. It was a terrible piece of luck. Will the police really believe we ran into such a piece of luck and still hocked the take? How terrible that sounds. We've no morals at all.

That was the sticking point. "We've no morals at all," Feuilly repeated aloud. "My god, what have I done?" He broke down sobbing. The coat, bought with the proceeds of the murder, was intolerable. He threw it to the floor and kicked it under the bed. Curled around the bundle of rags he called a pillow, he wept until he had no more tears.

He finally forced himself to sit up and dry his eyes. It was still light. Feuilly brushed off the hated coat, picked up his hat, and went out into the street. No one paid a bit of attention to him, but he ignored them as well, walking quickly, his head down. He needed to move about. It was safer in his room, he knew, but he needed to move about before he went mad. He walked. He just walked. Before he even realised he had reached new pavement, he was crossing the canal. He kept going.

The sun was setting when he finally stopped to see where he was. Somehow, he had entered the Jewish neighbourhood. He headed south. It was intolerable to be caught in the Jewish district. The nearest bridge was the Pont Marie. He hurried west. A part of him wondered if the police were still there, but he was too afraid to see for himself. The light was a brilliant yellow as he reached the river. Notre Dame. The bells were ringing for vespers. He paused on the quai, just staring at the cathedral.

Such a beautiful lady she was, Feuilly thought. Ill used, abandoned, ignored, but still beautiful. He crossed the bridge nervously, avoiding looking at the prefecture of police. At the door to the cathedral, he paused to stroke the stone pedestal of the saint who stood between the wooden doors.

The interior was very dim in the fading light. Candles did little good in such a vast space. He slid into a chair in the last row, avoiding the rest of the faithful who had come for the actual service. It was not a crowd. The audience consisted mostly of women from the neighbouring mass of slums.

He closed his eyes and let the Latin flow over him. Not a word was comprehensible, but the sound was comforting. His thoughts could drift into his own prayer.

"I never meant to." He was mouthing the words, but no sound escaped his lips. "Well, I did, but I didn't. I knew we were going to have to the minute Brujon and Babet jumped him. I didn't think it would have to be me. It wasn't even my knife. The knife is for protection. You've seen how Babet threatens me. I never meant to kill anyone with it. I never meant to kill anyone, ever. I got scared. He was about to shout, I know he was. I'm sorry. I know I'm already going to hell. I'm already living in hell. But what else do I do? You don't make this easy." He agitatedly rubbed the back of his neck. "Why do some people get it so easy? What was wrong with me that I got dealt this hand? How am I supposed to play this hand? I can't win. I can't even stay in the game without cheating." The boy was already near tears again. "I never intended to hurt anyone. I've had how many chances, and I've never taken one of them. It was an accident. A mistake. I don't know. I'm so sorry. Can You ever forgive me?" His resolve collapsed again in a flood of silent tears.

Be strong, he tried to tell himself. Only children cry. But that isn't true, he thought. Christ wept. With damned good reason, too. What kind of world is this where I can't feed myself honestly and this beautiful lady is left to ruin? Has God forsaken Paris? Or has Paris forsaken God?

Feuilly wiped his eyes. I've earned punishments. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain. Thou shalt not covet that which belongs to thy neighbour. Honour thy father and thy mother. There's half the list right there. "I don't know that You can ever forgive me. I'm sorry." He crossed himself quickly. "I'm sorry."

The strains of the kyrie followed him out of the crumbling church. Gripping his coat tightly around him, though it was not cold, he hurried home, half certain the world was collapsing around him.


	16. Chapter 16

Feuilly held out for three days, in a way, though as a child of the streets, a constant need for air and light drove him outside for at least a few minutes several times a day. He spoke to no one on these short ventures, and no one spoke to him. On the fourth day, he finished what remained of his store of food. He counted his money carefully, over and over. He did figures in his head.

That evening, well after sunset, he went down to the wineshop. Babet was in his usual corner, talking to the shadows where Claquesous sat behind his mask. Feuilly pulled up a chair and sat straddling it casually. "Well? What's next?"

He forced down his loathing as a hoarse voice from the shadows congratulated him on his first body. He needed the money too badly.

A week passed, and Feuilly grew accustomed to swallowing his disgust at his continued association with true murderers. He did not consider himself one of their number: after all, he had not actually meant to kill the man. It had been a reflex, the working of the muscles, not the mind. He was dead before Feuilly had had time to consider his actions. Babet's and Claquesous' previous corpses had been planned murders. Claquesous' last murder was the reason he wore a mask and kept to the shadows. Feuilly refused to classify his accident with their transgressions.

At least he did when he was awake. When he was certain the police were tired of looking, he relaxed. After the next job, less than two weeks after he came out of hiding, the dreams began. All he remembered of them was the weak little man begging for his life, then he awoke in a terror he did not understand, as terrified as if he had been in the man's place.

He sought out Lydie more often at the end of the night. Her presence did not always stop the dreams, but they came less frequently, and she did not shrink from comforting him when they did. She was cool and soft in his arms, and he could pretend that he was protecting her from clients and other ladies' pimps and anyone else who might not understand how much it upset her to be hurt.

December came before he realised it, and in the second week he saw the first snowfall of the season. It barely covered the ground, but it was snow nonetheless, and the next night seemed colder because of it. Cold weather increased expenses and decreased the available jobs. Christmas almost seemed a bad joke.

He spent the day with Lydie. They went to mass in order to stay warm, though it meant enduring looks of scorn from those who recognised Feuilly's particular manner of shabby dress as the mark of a less than honest man. The labouring poor had only their smocks and workboots while Feuilly went about in bourgeois cast-offs. The church was full, thanks to the cold weather. Though he knew eyes were on him and Lydie, Feuilly refused to return any but the most direct looks. These he greeted with a deliberate nod and a smile, though he cursed them all behind his proud stare.

She went off to work afterwards, but they met again for dinner. Feuilly arrived first, and looking around the wineshop at the familiar faces, he realised he had not seen Mireille in months. Lydie would know where she was, he thought, and he asked her the moment she arrived.

She looked at the ground rather than answering immediately. "She headed south, thought there were too many of us in this neighbourhood. I wasn't supposed to tell you. She said you'd just worry."

"She was right. What possessed her to go? When did she go?"

"I ain't seen her in a month or more. Movin' around is better for trade, she said."

"That's a load of shit. What aren't you telling me?"

"I'm telling you everything I know!"

"No, you're not. You look guilty."

"She wasn't well last I saw her. It may have just been passing. Now you're worried, see? She knew you'd worry."

"I can't exactly help it. Don't tell me you're not."

"Of course I am. But I don't know where she went. She didn't tell me, and she gave up her room."

"When did you last see her, Lydie?"

"How do I know? Sit down. Before - well - when you wasn't paying so much attention to me."

Around the time of the accident, he thought. "And she was ill?"

"She wasn't dying! I'm not that stupid." Lydie looked down. "She was coughing. It had been damp, and she was coughing. It could have been anything, you know that. If she wants you, she'll find you."

"What a Christmas," Feuilly muttered. It was not a party atmosphere, not with Mireille apparently crawling off to die alone, full of shame over something he could not grasp. But he still took Lydie home with him, and late that night, they made love under everything they owned: every blanket, his overcoat, her shawl, and all the rest of their clothes.

The window was frosted on both sides in the morning, and Feuilly dressed quickly so that he might use the stove downstairs to melt his frozen pitcher of water. Lydie ducked out while he was gone.

The art book went back into hock. Rent was due before the end of the year, and the next job was not yet ripe. Lydie disappeared for a few days, Feuilly tried to study, but he felt distracted, and he imagined that she felt it, too. Something in the air was not quite right.

The job went off just before the New Year. Feuilly preferred to spread around the take, especially when he found jewelry. He had found a good market for jewelry as long as he could dispose of it before the robbery was reported. Returning to his apartment to stash the rest of his earnings before retrieving his book from the shop he usually frequented, he discovered Lydie sitting outside his door, barely visible in the dim light from the slice of window at the end of the hall.

She grabbed his hands. "It's Mireille. You've got to come. Please. She's not well, not well at all. Do you have any money? She's in a lodging house, Feuilly, and they're going to kick her, the law says they have to."

"Is she -" He could not bring himself to finish.

"I don't know."

"We can't bring her here. We need to take her someplace warm. I need to think. No, I need to see her. No, I can't see her until I've made some sort of arrangements. But I don't know what kind of arrangements to make until I've seen her. It must be bad if you were waiting for me. You have to tell me."

Lydie was shaking. "I don't know if it's the end or not, but if it isn't, then it's because the end ain't so far off. She's skin and bone, Feuilly, and coughing so much. I bought her the bed last night, but they're gonna kick her soon!"

He held her tightly, trying not to cry himself. "There was a sign that said rooms to let. I saw it this morning. But I don't remember where. It might have been near the canal. I'll see. Show me where she is, and then you go and stay with her. Give them anything they ask to keep them from kicking her." He kissed her quickly on the lips. "Hurry. I know the time as well as you do."

But when they arrived at the door, Feuilly could not bring himself to leave without first seeing Mireille. He held Lydie's hand tightly, and like two scared children, they ducked into the dark entrance which smelled of mud and urine and liquor.

It was a common lodging house like any other. The night's occupants had mostly left and the lean rope had been taken down so that it hung by only one end. There were more mattresses than bedsteads and more piles of blankets than mattresses. Lydie and Feuilly picked their way across the room, entered another, and Lydie finally knelt down next to one of the mattresses.

"Mireille?" she whispered. The only response was a fit of coughing that wracked the blankets so violently it seemed they might crumble.

Feuilly knelt down behind her. "Mireille. It's me."

She pulled the blanket away from her face. Lydie had not exaggerated: her face bore a strong resemblance to a skull, but for the trail of blood at the corner of her mouth. "Feuilly," she croaked.

"Shhh, don't talk." He gently brushed a few thin strands of hair out of her face. "We're trying to find you someplace warm to stay."

"I missed you."

"I missed you, too. Lydie is going to stay with you while I find a nicer bed." He kissed her hand. "I need to talk to her for a moment."

Feuilly pulled her aside. "She can't get far. Wherever it was I saw the notice is too far, we can't carry her. I'll be back as soon as I can, but give this to the lodging house keeper if she starts making a fuss about the time. Our luck can't be so bad that this place will be inspected today."

Lydie took the twenty-sous piece and nodded quickly. "Hurry back."

"I promise." He kissed her quickly and rushed out into the street.

Pushing through the growing crowds, Feuilly made his way the few streets to their tavern. He went around to the back and snuck into the courtyard, carefully watching the upper floors. After what felt an eternity, a window opened and a green tongue flicked out. Vivienne was shaking out the rugs. After she closed the window, Feuilly heaved a handful of dirty snow at it. It made a satisfying "thunk", and she immediately opened the window again to shout at him for being a child. Except the moment she saw his face in the morning light, her annoyance faded.

"What's wrong?"

"I need a favour."

"I'll be right down."

She came out to the courtyard, wrapping a dark shawl around her shoulders as she came towards him. "Something's wrong."

"I need a room for a couple of days. A room with a stove. I can't pay much. Not for why I need it."

"Feuilly, what's wrong?"

"Mireille is dying, and I won't let it happen in the street."

They were silent a moment. Vivienne closed her eyes, then opened them again as if her mind was made up. "You can have the room. Come with me. I'll show you."

"Will your father be angry?"

"Probably." She led him into the kitchen. "I don't care. He'll only care that the place will be crawling with cops eventually, but everyone will get over it. Mireille is good people. Never ran a tab she couldn't pay."

"Not everything is business."

"You can tell a lot about a person by how they conduct their business. Your friend Babet thinks the world owes him. He pays, but never on the day and he always makes us feel like shit for collecting."

"What about me?" he asked as he followed her up the narrow staircase

"You're too good to be hanging about the likes of him. You're like Mireille. Polite, respectful, never run a tab. Prudent. You'll make some girl a real nice husband one day. Well, this is it."

"Second floor. I don't know how I'll get her up here."

"It's the best I can do. I'll help."

"We'll be all right. Lydie is with her now."

"I'm closer to your height than Lydie is. It'll be easier with the two of us, one on each side. Where is she?"

"Flop house. A few streets away."

"I'll come with you."

Feuilly shook his head. "Get the stove heated and everything. You can help us bring her up the stairs."

"All right."

He made his way back to Lydie and Mireille. "The tavern. Vivienne is starting a fire right now. Mireille, we're going to take you someplace warm."

After her latest coughing fit faded, she choked out, "You don't have to talk to me like I'm a child."

"I know. Let me help you up."

"I'm fine right here."

"They want to kick you out into the street."

"Then let them."

"Never."

"You can't afford whatever it is you're about to do."

"Don't worry about what I can and can't afford."

"I don't need no doctor."

"I know. You need a comfortable bed and some hot tea, though. Will you let me help you up?"

With trouble, Mireille pushed herself to a sitting position, and Feuilly and Lydie lifted her to her feet. She clung to Feuilly as she tried to get her balance, doubled over coughing again. The lodging-house keeper gave them the evil eye as she polished the silver coin Lydie had given her. The going was slow, but soon Mireille was installed in the little second floor room, where Vivienne had a brisk fire going in the stove and a cup of broth waiting. While she bustled about Mireille, Feuilly took Lydie into the hall.

"You haven't slept, have you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does. Go home. Get some rest. I'll stay with her. Come tonight, before you head out to work." He kissed her on the cheek. "We'll be fine for a few hours."

Lydie could only nod, trying to keep from crying. "I'll see you both tonight, then."


	17. Chapter 17

Feuilly fussed with the blankets, tucking them as tightly around her as possible.

"You haven't slept either, have you?" Mireille asked. She coughed again with the effort.

"I'm more used to it than she is." He pulled the chair close to the bed, sitting carefully on the frayed rush seat. "It's been too long since I've seen you."

"You didn't let me say goodbye."

"I was busy. Studying and all that." The lie sounded terribly flat and obvious to his ears.

"Don't look at me like that. Like I'm dying. I wanted to see you again, but not like this. Do you hate me for wanting to see my boy again?"

"Not at all." Feuilly kissed her hand. "I missed you terribly at Christmas."

"Did you have a nice holiday?"

"Rather. Lydie and I went to mass."

"At Notre-Dame?"

He flushed. "Where else? That and a bit of dinner were my Christmas. No money for presents."

"That doesn't matter. You and Lydie had Christmas together. That's all that counts."

"I would have liked to have you there."

"Rubbish," Mireille coughed. "I would have been in the way."

"Not at dinner. Not at mass."

"But at the other mass?" He flushed even darker at the insinuation. "I did well for you, eh?"

"You've always done well for me. More of a mother than my own."

"You shouldn't talk that way. I'm sure your mother loved you very much."

"No deathbed confessions, please. I'm in no mood to learn she was a duchess."

"I've nothing to confess. I never knew your mother - you know that." She broke down coughing. Feuilly grabbed the cup of water Vivienne had left and helped her to drink. "You talk. I miss hearing you talk."

"There's not a whole lot to say."

"Are you still drawing?"

"Not so much anymore. No money. We're really feeling the pinch this year. Book's back in hock. Rent comes before everything. I was getting better with the paints, though, this summer. Still have them, even though I can't afford good paper right now. They look rubbish with cheap paper. Or maybe they look rubbish when I try to use cheap paper. Maybe I just haven't learned how to use them properly. But the last thing I did was a little portrait of Lydie. Not real big, which made it harder. Came out real pretty. The shading wasn't quite right, and the whole thing looked a little flat because of it, but real pretty all the same." He tried not to sound too eager, but the pride was always evident when he talked about his painting.

"I'm so proud of you."

"There's nothing to be proud of. I'm a thief. I'm not an artist, I'm not a lawyer, I'm just a thief. I go to mass and I'm stared at by all the honest people. That's how it is and that's how it's always going to be." She started to interrupt, but a fit of coughing allowed him to continue as he helped her. "There's a certain peace in accepting it. I'll always be stared at, even if I did manage to go straight and make something of myself. I'll never really belong to any society except this one. So I accept that this is what I am. If I'm lucky, I'll die before I go to prison, but I know better than to think I'll have a long life. I've come close to getting caught twice now. But I won't have anyone think I'm a coward. This is my life, and I'm going to live it as best I can."

"I am proud of you. You were always a good boy, and you've grown up into an honest, hardworking man."

"I'm a thief."

"But you're an honest one. And when things look a little better, you'll find your ambition again."

"I know better than to reach for the sky anymore."

"Bullshit. You're a little down, that's all. You've still been reading, haven't you? Tell me about what you've been reading."

He chatted to her about the _Republic_, which he had just finished, until she fell into a light sleep.

Vivienne met him on the stairs. "How is she?"

"Have you been listening at the door?"

"Heavens, no! I wouldn't dream of it!"

"She's better." The words sounded hollow in his ears. "The warmth is what she needed."

"I'm glad to be of service."

"She's sleeping, now."

"Did you want some breakfast? No charge," she hastened to add.

"I don't want to put you out."

"My father isn't here right now, and I don't make offers I don't intend to see through. Come down to the kitchen. I'll fix you something hot."

He followed, not quite certain how to decline the offer, especially as breakfast was welcome. The kitchen was both larger and smaller than he had expected. Vivienne and her father still used the big fireplace for cooking, and the vast hearth dominated what might otherwise have been a large room. Everything else was cramped into the space away from the fire. She knocked some coals about as he watched and set up a skillet on thin iron feet into which she tossed a fat sausage when it had grown hot.

"Sit down, sit down!" He perched on a stool nearly the same height as the long table covered in cooking implements and meals in various stages of preparation. "I haven't seen you for a bit."

"Haven't had the money."

"That's what I like about you. You don't go racking up debts like some people. If everyone were like you -"

"You wouldn't have many customers," Feuilly finished for her.

"I was going to say this place would be a lot more bearable. You don't have to spend all day with her, you know. I could sit with her. I'm not sure I want you to see the end."

"I've seen people die before, Viv."

"Not of consumption." She dropped his sausage onto a cracked plate with a piece of cheese and a chunk of bread. "You're practically a man, but you ought to keep some of that innocence a little longer."

"I am a man, and I'm not innocent."

"Eat. In ten years, when you're as old as I am, you'll realise that right now, you are not yet a man. Maybe you've seen people die, but you haven't seen them die like this."

"And you have?"

"My mother died of consumption. I sat with her because my father had to run the shop. You've known her as long as I knew my mother. I don't wish such a death on anyone."

"It can't be as bad as what I've - what I've seen," he quickly corrected.

"The blood fills her throat and you watch her be smothered in it, helpless. I don't think she'd want you to watch it."

Feuilly swallowed hard. "But I have to be there. And she'll finally be at peace at the end of it. She'll need me there, and then she'll be at peace. That's got to mean something."

"I'll sit with her if you need me," Vivienne said simply.

"I should get back up there."

"Finish your breakfast."

He took a half-hearted bite, then another as he realised his hunger. "You never mentioned your mother before."

"It never mattered."

"It does matter. You don't treat me like just any other customer."

"That's because you're not. But you've your own problems, your own friends. What do mine matter to you?"

"You're a friend. I like you more than I like Babet, Brujon, and Claquesous combined."

"I like you. Do you know I've known Mireille since she was young? She was about your age when she first came round here, about the time my mother started really fading. Never pretty, but I thought if I grew up to look like her, I'd have a good life. But I don't look like her in the least, and while I'll live longer, I won't necessarily live happier than she did."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven, and no marriage proposals in sight. No one wants to help run this place, that's the real problem. If I had a brother to take the place over, maybe it would have been different."

"I'd help you run it."

"You're going to be something better than an innkeeper. I wouldn't dream of letting you."

"Did you know my mother?"

She shook her head. "You just showed up one day, this little boy with a head full of curls, begging for something to eat. You looked so pathetic, and papa stopped me from giving you a piece of bread. I was so happy when Mireille bought you dinner."

"She's been as good as a mother to me."

"Nearly. She can stay as long as she needs to. You better get back up to her. Papa doesn't need to know everything about how I choose to run my business."

Mireille remained asleep. Feuilly could hardly bear to hear her laboured breathing, but he did not dare leave her. He wrapped his coat tightly around himself and huddled in the corner near the door. Just as he began to drift off to sleep, he heard angry footsteps on the stairs which jerked him awake. The walls were thin, and Vivienne's father did not even attempt to lower his voice.

"This is a tavern, not a hospital! We rent beds to strangers; we don't give them to dying whores!"

"Feuilly promised he'd pay! I'm not about to let her die in the street when we can at least make her more comfortable. And we are earning on it!"

"That boy hasn't got a sou to his name."

"He's never run a tab, which is more than I can say for most of our customers. He'll pay it off. May not be all at once, but he'll pay it. I know he will. I'm not a fool. No one who grew up in a place like this can be a fool."

"And who is going to pay the undertaker?"

"No one. He can't afford a funeral for her, too."

"I don't want the cops in here. I'd rather the undertaker than the police. Is that clear?"

"We'll manage something."

"We?"

"He! He will manage something. With my help if necessary!"

Lighter steps flew down the stairs, the heavier ones following. Feuilly settled down to sleep in his corner.

He woke when the mid-afternoon sun reached the little window. Mireille began to stir as well, and he poked at the fire, trying to get it to burn a little higher. She tried to push herself to a sitting position, and since there were not enough pillows, he rolled his overcoat to push behind her. "How are you feeling?"

"Better." She coughed again. "You should get some rest."

"I've had some rest. Are you hungry? Do you want anything?"

"Just my boy."

"Anyone would think you were my mother. You know, sometimes I think it would have been better if I had known her."

"Nonsense. You'd be no more respectable and far less free. Besides, if you'd had someone to look after you better, how would you have learned to read? How would you have learned what sort of books there are in the world? You'd be no better than the men who unload barges and cheat on their equally overworked wives. You'd right now be chained to a dying woman without a dream in your head."

"You don't seem to think much of humanity."

"Look at me. Look at Lydie. Why should we think much of the mass of men? Or women, too, for that matter. Man is a curse, except for the few shining examples that make us put up with each other."

Feuilly blushed. "You don't mean me."

"Of course I mean you."

"But what about you? You never talk about your family."

"I've done my best to forget all them. I had a mother. I had a father. I had a brother. My mother died. My father was a drunk. My brother went into the wars. I ran off with the man who came round to announce the dead. And I started forgetting. Can barely remember my own surname. Richard, Ricard -" She shrugged. "Not worth anything now. I'll be registered at last. 'The prostitute, called Mireille'."

"What a pair we are. I don't remember my own Christian name. Assuming I had one to begin with. God only knows if I use the name I was born with or if I invented it of my own inabilities."

"It's a good name."

He grabbed her hand. "I'll make you a trade. You can take my surname and give me a Christian one in exchange."

She broke down coughing, but her eyes looked merry as she regained control. "You'd make that trade?"

"Gladly. Is it a deal?"

"But first I need a name for you. You must let me think."

He sat watching her, suddenly nervous. What had possessed him to ask for something so personal and yet so worthless? What would he do with a Christian name? Learn to answer to it?

She looked up at him at last. "I have it. But do you want it?"

His voice was shaky. "We have a deal, don't we?"

Mireille smiled. "Daniel."

"Daniel," Feuilly repeated.

"Babet and his bunch are lions, but god has made sure you won't be harmed by them."

He didn't know whether to smile at the analogy or cry at how false it had lately become. He shut his eyes against the tears and raised her hand to his lips. "Daniel."

She stroked his cheek. "You've no excuse now not to be something better. You've a proper name and a good education. During the empire, that's all it took for a man to be able to dream."

"It's not that way anymore."

"Only if you think it's not. You have such dreams. Something grand will come of them. I know it."

She began to cough again, and Feuilly tried to steer the conversation toward more innocuous subjects: news of the neighbourhood, the success of the canal, Vivienne's invaluable assistance. Mireille seemed to fade in and out, but whenever he paused, she asked for more. Finally he ran out of other topics and concluded, "Lydie is going to come back this evening."

"Good. You like her, don't you?"

"Of course."

"I want you to promise me to look after her."

"That's an easy promise to make, Mireille."

"Marry her."

Feuilly was aghast. "What?"

"Marry her. She needs someone to take care of her properly. When you've got that good job, marry her. She'll be such a sweet wife, and you will have such handsome children."

He looked her directly in the eye, though he chose his words carefully. "I promise to look after her."

"Thank you. My children, my pretty children."

"Try to rest."

She settled back into the pillows, but her breathing was even more laboured from the effort of so much speech. Feuilly rubbed a clear space in the window and took to watching the pigeons in the yard. Marry Lydie? His revulsion to the idea was complete, and yet he could not pin down the precise reason. She was pretty. He enjoyed her company. He wanted to look after her. They were so young, but Mireille did not intend that they marry this very day. After all, she had asked that when he managed to find a respectable job that he take her as his wife. If he never became respectable, he could keep her as his mistress as long as they both liked. It would be so easy to marry her, and so obviously pleasant. And yet he hated the idea.

A soft knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Lydie had come early, dressed in her day clothes rather than her evening dress. Feuilly did not know how to greet her, how to answer her simply query of how Mireille did. He brought her to the bed in silence, and it was with a certain relief that he left them alone as Mireille requested.

He went downstairs to the kitchen, where Vivienne and her father were both hard at work on the evening's dinner. Vivienne pulled him aside.

"How is she?"

He merely shook his head.

"I can fetch a doctor."

"She's past that now," he muttered.

"You must let me know if there is something I can do."

"I know."

"Something more than just this is wrong. You talked before."

"It's nothing, he lied. "The end isn't far off. Lydie is with her."

"Final secrets?"

"You read too many novels," he spat out.

"At least that was a coherent sentence."

"I'm going back upstairs." He felt her father's eyes seemed to follow him all the way, though the man never left the fire.

Lydie met him at the door. "I have to go out."

"I know. You need to get changed."

"I don't like to leave her like this."

"I'll stay. You can come in between tricks. She'll probably sleep most of the time. She's done all the talking she can do for a good while."

Lydie stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. "I will see you soon."

He helped Mireille lie down, but as her breathing grew steadily worse, he helped her back into a sitting position so that the lungs did not have to counteract gravity with every breath. She dozed fitfully, but she did not try to speak again. Lydie's visits were short, breathless affairs, and she brought the January cold into the room each time.

He faintly heard the church bells strike midnight, not long after Lydie left. Mireille woke with a great coughing fit, and Feuilly held her as she struggled to regain control. Her breathing grew worse, and another fit close upon the first produced a torrent of blood. He held her forward, hoping to tip out the rest of the blood somehow, but all he could do was hold her, hiding behind her dying body to avoid seeing her face as she suffocated in her own blood.

Vivienne found them a few minutes later when she came bearing cups of tea. Feuilly did not even look at the door though it creaked loudly. He had closed her eyes and wiped the blood from her chin, and now he sat holding her hand.

The next thing he knew, men were in the room, men dressed in black. "What do you want done with her?"

He looked up at the man, uncomprehending.

"What do you want done with her?"

"I - I don't know. We can't afford a funeral."

"We'll see to it. What's your name?"

"Feuilly. Daniel Feuilly," he corrected.

"And the woman?"

"Mireille." Feuilly carefully crossed her arms over her chest. "She was my mother."


	18. Chapter 18

Lydie appeared just as the undertaker and his assistant threw Mireille's body into their wagon. Feuilly shuddered as he heard the thump of dead flesh on old wood. Lydie threw herself into his arms, sobbing, and he mechanically pulled her inside his coat. He watched, dry-eyed, as the wagon pulled away, the horses snorting out huge clouds of ice in the January cold.

He took Lydie home with him, and, huddled fully dressed in his bed, he comforted her all night. She finally fell asleep, but he could not. He stared in her direction though he could not see her in the darkness. He stroked her hair, trying to identify why he hated the idea of marrying her. Had Mireille told her that he would marry her? What choice did he have in the matter then? And if he had no choice, why fight it? He had promised to look after her, and he still intended that. The idea of marriage annoyed him, but how else to look after her? She'd be a rubbish wife, but even that thought didn't explain why he felt so cold to the idea of marriage. But as the sky began to lighten, he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. There would be time for it later.

There was no funeral. He went back to the tavern in order to learn how much he owed the mortuary and Vivienne, and Vivienne told him that the body had been turned over to the city.

Her father glared at them as they chatted quietly in a corner of the kitchen. "The bill is four francs. Three of those are for the undertakers," she finished quickly.

He looked through the small coins in his pockets. "I can pay two francs and ten sous now. I'll have the rest tomorrow."

"Whenever you can." The moment her father turned his back, she kissed him square on the lips. Blushing furiously, she pulled away. "I'll see you around, won't I?"

He was only slightly less red. Not looking at her, he replied, "I'll pay you the rest tomorrow."

Lydie was awake when he returned. "Where were you?"

"I had to see about the bill," he told her a bit sharply. "How are you doing?"

"I ain't seen no one dead before."

"Better to see the dead than the dying."

"Was it awful?"

"I'm glad you weren't there. She's at peace now, that's all that matters."

"Where's she going to be buried?"

"Don't know. The undertakers gave her to the city to take care of since we couldn't pay but to get her moved out of there." He didn't want to know what would be done with her now, especially after an aborted scheme Babet had once had for grave robbing to sell to the medical school. "I've got some other errands to run. Will you manage without me for a couple of hours or so?"

She nodded. "I'll go home."

"I'll walk you. It's on the way, more or less."

Lydie watched as he collected a bundle from behind one of the boards that formed his outside wall. "I didn't know you had a hiding place."

"Don't you dare breathe a word of that to anyone," he snapped

"I wouldn't!" She sounded hurt.

He stuffed it in the pocket of his overcoat and buttoned the flap. "Come along."

Feuilly put his arm around her as they walked, but he did not feel entirely comfortable. It seemed as if several unkind years had passed since they had run home together in the rain. Which was true enough, when he thought about it, but those two years were not enough to explain how he now felt. It seemed he was quite grown up now and Lydie still nothing more than a child. As if she felt his stiffness, she pulled away in silence, almost stalking inside.

Instead of heading to Jacquemont's pawn shop, Feuilly headed into the centre of the city to meet with one of the real jewelers he had come to know. The walk did little to soothe his nerves. Bargaining with the jeweler helped.

As Feuilly wrapped the rest of his take back up, he asked, "Is anyone around here hiring, do you know?"

"Hiring for what?"

"Anything, really. I can't live a whole lot longer on family heirlooms."

"No idea. What can you do? Not a bad eye for gems. I noticed some total rubbish in there you didn't bother showing me properly."

"Read, write, do sums, draw, paint – little of everything, I suppose."

"We're not hiring, but there's a lawyer has an office upstairs from the milliner. You might ask him."

"I'll do that. Thank you."

A shakily written note on the lawyer's door informed all comers that he would resume practice when the courts resumed session on the fifteenth of January. An elderly clerk sat scribbling in a ledger. Feuilly tapped on the glass pane. The clerk did not even look up. He rapped at the door, and finally got the clerk's attention.

"Did you not see the notice?"

"I saw it. I read it. I'm merely asking about work."

"Maître Ledoyen needs no additional clerks," the old man informed him, looking down his long nose at Feuilly.

But he could use someone to sweep up the dust, Feuilly thought. "Do you know of anyone who might need some help?"

"I don't. But people are in and out of the milliner's all the time, if you simply need clerical work. And the men at the legal bookshop on the quai des Orfèvres might know of something if you are specifically looking for a legal position."

Feuilly thanked him for his time. He looked into the milliner's window, but the sight of so many women did not encourage him to stop and ask questions. He was in no mood to be mothered or disdained.

The legal bookshop was next to the large central prefecture of police. Feuilly shuddered as he passed the large, heavy doors outside which two uniformed officers lounged, smoking and chatting. The bookshop itself, however, was comforting. It was small and cramped, the smell of paper and ink and leather vaguely reminiscent of the pawn shops to which he was more accustomed. A young man, his dark coat and trousers protected by a long white apron, was busy dusting and shelving books. The desk was staffed by an older gentleman, his pink scalp showing through his thinning white hair.

"How can I help you today, monsieur?" he greeted Feuilly.

Feuilly was surprised by the friendly tone and the polite greeting. "I'm looking for a job. As a clerk or something."

"Have you any experience?"

He flushed. "None. But I read and write and I learn quickly."

"Let's take a look." The shop owner produced a sheaf of papers from under the counter. "Do you know Latin?"

"I'm afraid I don't. But I learn quickly."

The owner nodded. He began flipping through sheets. "I've a few places you could try. Nothing that pays much. Nothing will pay much if you don't have the Latin." He began to scribble names and addresses on a fresh piece of paper.

Feuilly thanked him gratefully. "It is kind of you to be so helpful to a stranger."

"You have an honest face. Make sure it stays that way." He passed the sheet to Feuilly. "Marquand is probably best. Be sure to tell him that M. Pradel sent you."

"I will. Thank you, monsieur."

Feuilly went back across the river in order to read the paper more carefully. He had no desire to spend too long in the shadow of the prefecture of police. Pradel had written the names and addresses of five men.

The sun was already high in the cold January sky, and Feuilly realised he had not yet eaten. With a pocket full of ready money, he decided to treat himself to what might be his last hot meal for a while. A rather greasy café in the Marais served him a glass of wine, a bowl of onion soup, and large quantity of bread, though he did have to share a table with three strangers, only two of whom had previously met. He and the other man, who appeared middle aged and thinner than he ought to be, did their best to ignore the younger, better-dressed friends' conversation. So this is the society of clerks, Feuilly thought as he dipped bread in his soup and half-listened to other men discuss finances, women, and bosses as they ate. The vast majority were dressed slightly better than he, though at closer inspection, many were simply dressed more soberly in worn and patched coats that may not have been black when they were new. It was so easy to refresh a coat and trousers with a little black dye. The younger men chatted loudly of women and the theatre; the older men either sat silently or bent low over their tables, murmuring to each other.

The younger men finished and left first, leaving Feuilly and his middle aged companion alone. The man seemed to be inspecting him, and out of habit, Feuilly glared back, daring him to say something. But nothing was said on either side, and Feuilly left before he had even finished swallowing his last bite of bread.

If these were lawyers' clerks, he certainly did not think much of them. Some had decent clothes, but most did not. Poverty appeared to increase with age. But he had no plans for marriage, in any case, and marriage and children were what surely had brought these poor men to misery. Their younger brothers were generally in better shape. But it wasn't exactly the way the novels all seemed to imply, that if you worked hard, you could marry your employer's daughter and take over his practice when he died, blessing you on his deathbed.

Novels are ridiculous, Feuilly said to himself. You knew better than to believe them in the first place. This is Paris. It is 1824. You know better than to believe in anything. Besides, do you look like any of these men? Not in the least. That other clerk looked at you as if he'd scraped you off his shoe. The men in the café couldn't be bothered with you or thought you were suspicious.

To hell with going straight. Feuilly crumpled the list of addresses and started back to his part of the city. What good was help when it wasn't any help at all? He was a thief and a murderer, and thanks to Babet's fathering, that was all he would ever be good for.

But as the canal came into view, Feuilly's steps slowed. What good was there in going back to everything he already knew? He didn't love Lydie. Vivienne seemed to care for him, but she was ten years his senior, and in any case, he'd never go to her as less than an honest man. She deserved better than the thieves and con men with which she was surrounded. Other than the women, Brujon was the only person who cared if he stayed in one piece. Babet treated him as if he were expendable. And M. Pradel thought him an honest man.

He still clutched the paper in his hand. A. Marquand. G. Brochard. R. Huet. F. Raimbourg. C. Gobin. Marquand and Raimbourg were in streets Feuilly did not recognise. Which left Brochard, Huet, and Gobin. Huet was on the quai aux Fleurs, near Notre Dame. Feuilly determined to try M. Huet first – M. Gobin was in the same street, and M. Brochard appeared to be nearby as well.

M. Huet appeared terribly busy when Feuilly entered, with two copyists hard at work and a clerk receiving instructions from his master. It was several moments before anyone took notice of Feuilly. "You, boy, what do you want?" the clerk asked as he put on his overcoat.

"M. Pradel said there was an opening for a clerk."

"Monsieur, someone about the position!" the man called to the back before leaving without another glance at Feuilly.

M. Huet was middle aged, rather fat, and seemingly rather ill tempered. "What's your name?"

"Feuilly. Daniel Feuilly."

"Who've you been working for?"

"Pardon?"

"You've got a current employer, don't you?" After looking him over, Huet answered his own question, "Apparently not. New to Paris?"

Feuilly latched onto the chance to lie as if it were a life rope. "Yes, sir. Thought I'd try my luck in the city."

"Where did you come from?"

Where did he come from? The South, Mireille had said. The South, the South. "Marseilles," he replied.

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen, monsieur." Well, more or less.

"Law clerk in Marseilles, were you?"

"No, sir."

"I told Pradel no apprentices! Certainly not overgrown ones like you. Nineteen and no experience. What am I supposed to do with that?"

Feuilly crept out while Huet continued to rail at his copyists on the subject of Pradel's inanity. Overgrown he might be, but he thought it a lucky escape.

M. Gobin's office was guarded by a clerk who could have been the grandson of Ledoyen's goat – the same expression creased the much younger face. "Work, you say? You want work? M. Gobin has no need of another clerk."

Feuilly pulled his nerve together as best he could. "M. Pradel, at the legal bookshop, told me to see M. Gobin."

"M. Pradel will be informed that there is no position." He looked down at Feuilly from his high stool. "M. Gobin would only hire someone who would reflect well on the firm. You would do better to seek work among your own kind, in Les Halles, or the Temple."

He felt his heart in the pit of his stomach. "What do you take me for? A fence?" he managed to snap.

"I would have said a peddler. That hat? Really."

"At least I'm not a popinjay like you," he shot out as he slammed the door.

His stomach still churning with anger, Feuilly went after the next name on the list. This office was shabbier, which gave him a new burst of hope. The lawyer himself was young, shabby, and coughing as if he would not be long for the world. "Yes, I'm Gilles Brochard. You're here about the position? Sit down." He coughed into a handkerchief. "Tell me about yourself."

His politeness took Feuilly aback. "There's – there's nothing to say, really," he stammered. "I'm called Feuilly. Daniel Feuilly. I'm looking for a job. Thought becoming a clerk sounded nice. There's a future in that, isn't there?"

The young lawyer shrugged. "Sometimes, I suppose. Not nearly as often as in the novels. So you've not experience."

Feuilly shook his head. "I worked a while for a man who sells old clothes in the Temple."

"So you're good with money and bargaining. Any family? Dying mother you need to support or anything? I can't pay much, you see."

"She's already dead. I've been an orphan as long as I can remember."

"I'm sorry." He seemed genuinely sorry, too, perhaps because he was so near death himself, Feuilly thought. "It's really a copyist I need. Two sous a page. Are you interested?"

"Yes," Feuilly answered quickly, his heart jumping.

"Copy this out for me, then, as a trial." Brochard handed him a sheet and started coughing again. "Paper and ink at the desk," he indicated between coughs.

The light in the office was not good. The pen needed trimming, but the knife was dull and the result clumsy. But he forged ahead. It was a densely written page, and the original writer had idiosyncratic Gs, making it hard to read and still harder to copy. "How are you doing?" the lawyer asked from his own desk. Feuilly merely grunted in his concentration. A few minutes later, he presented the completed copy to the lawyer, holding up the original next to it. The copy was nearly exact, down to the signature – he was pleased with his work.

Brochard did not seem so happy, however. "The Temple. Yes, I should have known." His eyes narrowed. "If I needed a forger, I would have advertised for one." He folded the copy, which was still damp, and tore it into long, thin shreds. "Get out. I'd rather not have to send for the police."

His coldness and disappointment after such an auspicious beginning tore Feuilly to the core. How confusing was the legitimate world, where a copyist was not meant to copy. He had been such a nice young man, too, Feuilly thought. Understanding. He started fingering one of his curls nervously. His dress was all wrong, he didn't understand the work, he was too old – what was the point in even going to the man of all work when he was wrong for all honest work of this nature?

He went back to the pawnshop. There was usually a decent sized mirror – he wanted to look at himself and see what was so profoundly wrong.

"What do you want?" Jacquemont snapped.

"Got any furniture?"

"Don't tell me you're buying."

"What do you think?"

"In the back. Your friend, the big one, brought me three rugs this morning. Three! The man's a lunatic."

"Wagon comes tomorrow?"

"Day after."

"North or south for this lot?"

"None of your business."

Feuilly pointed to an elaborately carved standing mirror. "You think a provincial can appreciate that?"

"They appreciate what they pay for. What are you doing here this time of day?"

Feuilly stared at himself in the mirror. His waistcoat needed turned. Maybe one of Lydie's mates could do it for him. Trousers mud stained – he needed to find a dark pair. The hat was a little smashed, but that wasn't the problem. He was pale enough, his fingers ink stained from that awful pen, just like all the clerks. "I was looking for a job."

"Nice house?"

"No, I mean looking for a job. A position. Honest work."

Jacquemont laughed. "Honest work? You?"

"What's so wrong with that?" Feuilly replied defensively.

"You won't last. You've already been back for longer than you were at the mill."

"Why does everyone in Belleville know my business?"

"Your friends talk. Your real friends."

Feuilly laughed hollowly. "Ain't got real friends."

"Where do you think honesty will get someone with your talents?"

"It's not about talents. It's about being able to look at myself at the end of the day."

"You're looking now."

"And I don't like what I see. When did I get so flash?" That was it. That was why he didn't fit in with the clerks. Too much colour, too much variety.

"Bet your girl likes it."

"Haven't got a girl," Feuilly replied automatically.

"Babet said –"

"Babet's full of shit."

"You gonna stand around all day or you got something for me?"

"Hey, you need help around here, don't you? Packing up the take, writing tickets. I can do that."

"Bugger off. You want a job? Here." The pawnbroker smacked him with a newspaper and forced it into his hand. "Now get."

A bitter wind came up with the sundown. Feuilly went to the tavern to try to stay warm until he had no choice but to return to his cold bed.

The newspaper was two days old. Riots in Lyon – workers of Paris praised for not taking part. English poet Lord Byron arrives in Greece, bringing joy and funds to the beleaguered Christian soldiers. Conservative rag, carefully avoiding the word "revolution" in reference to the war. Feuilly settled in to reading the news from Greece in further detail.

Vivienne interrupted him. "Hey."

"Hey." He folded the paper and set it aside.

"How are you?"

"Fine."

"Haven't seen you since – you know."

He looked down. "I know."

"I missed you."

When he looked up, the light seemed to illuminate her rather than the room. "You look like a Rubens."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It is good. He's an artist who painted beautiful women."

"I'm not beautiful. I'm fat."

"The women in his paintings are both."

She blushed furiously – so did he when he realised what he had said. It had sounded so serious, intentional, grown-up, making a kiss in the kitchen seem like child's play in comparison – or perhaps a sign of something far more important than child's play. He knew he should look away, but he couldn't quite manage it. Her favourite confidence man broke the moment, calling for wine. But she returned with a bowl of coffee and milk for Feuilly. "Are you certain you don't want dinner?"

"Can't afford it."

"You don't have to pay."

"That's not fair."

"I don't get compliments often."

Feuilly was appalled. "You shouldn't have to pay for them!"

"It was a very nice thing you said, anyway."

"What was a very nice thing he said?" Lydie had just come in, dressed for the evening. She sounded annoyed.

"None of your business," Feuilly snapped at her."

"Keep off, Viv. He's promised to me."

"Don't be such a harpy," he ordered.

Lydie's eyes narrowed. "What's a harpy?"

"You, right now," he retorted. "In mythology, women with the bodies of birds and really loud voices who snatch sailors from ships. By metaphor, jealous screaming bitches."

"You sound like Babet," Vivienne warned him softly.

He immediately relented. "I'm sorry, Lydie. Please sit down." He pulled a chair out for her in the most gentlemanly manner he could muster.

"Where've you been all day?"

"Looking for a job," he sighed. "It's not so easy this time." He pulled the ribbon out of his hair so he could fiddle with his curls more easily.

"This time?"

"The mill took me straight away. Mireille didn't tell you I was two years at Lesage Mill?"

She shook her head. "She said you were a very nice picklock who was trying to get ahead in life."

"And that's the rub. I'm too old to apprentice to a proper trade. I got myself thrown out of a lawyer's office today because he thought I was forger."

"Forger sounds like a nice line."

"It's still illegal. It still harms people. What's so wrong with wanting to be honest?""

"Not everyone's born to it."

"Maybe you weren't, but I was." When he saw the hurt look on her face, he apologised. "What am I going to do?" he continued.

"What about your drawings?"

"That's what would make me such a good forger."

"I don't know how to help you," she snapped. "You want everything and nothing."

She left, giving a flirtatious look to Viv's con man, who followed soon after. She was right, Feuilly thought. He wanted everything, and yet he couldn't bear the idea of having anything.

He went back to his coffee and newspaper. The last two pages were filled with announcements, items for sale, even jobs. Nearly all were for the sort of work that had rejected Feuilly that day – clerks, secretaries, shop assistants. Others were for work he could not do – journeyman tailor, locksmith, leather worker. But one caught his eye. "Colourist needed. Watercolour and ink. Pay negotiable. See Cartoux, 15 rue Palmiers." Colourist was something he knew he could do.


	19. Chapter 19

Feuilly did not sleep well, and in the morning, he woke with the sun. Colourist. That has to be straightforward. He picked through his attempts at painting and selected his three best – two views of the Luxembourg and a portrait of Lydie. As he was about to leave, he slipped his sketchbook into his pocket, just in case. With his heart in his throat, he made his way through the bustling early morning streets to the address in the advertisement.

The rue Palmiers was a street of warehouses and large workshops, with constantly smoking chimneys and a crowd of people going about their business. He realised immediately that he was dressed improperly yet again – caps far outnumbered tall hats. Nothing for it now, with number 15 straight ahead. It was a narrow building, with many windows in the top floor.

A card at the side of the door said "Cartoux, master fanmaker, third floor". The stairs were dark and narrow, and Feuilly climbed slowly, becoming more and more nervous with each step. At the top, a flimsy door opened into a long, well-lit room. M. Cartoux had the entire top floor of the narrow yet deep building, and there were windows in gables all along the sides of the roof as well as in the walls in front and rear of the building. Two long tables ran much of the length of the room, with benches along each side, at which an assortment of men and women were working, the early morning light supplemented with hanging lamps.

A middle-aged man with a prominent hooked nose accosted Feuilly. "Who are you?"

"I – I'm looking for M. Cartoux? There was an advertisement. In the Gazette de France."

"I'm Cartoux. You're here about the colourist position." Feuilly nodded. "Come over here." He beckoned him to a desk in the corner. "What sort of experience have you got?"

"These, monsieur." He presented his paintings and his sketchbook.

"So you've not done this for a living."

"No, monsieur. I've been working in the Temple, for one of the old clothes dealers. But everyone says I'm very good with a brush."

Cartoux flipped through the sketchbook. "Better with a pen. All of this is yours?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"What's your name?"

"Feuilly. Daniel Feuilly."

"That would have been more appropriate twenty years ago for this business. Ah, well, it is what it is. I pay by the piece, the rate depends on the type of work. You'll start off with basic tints at three sous a piece. I'll try you for a week, then we'll see if I want to keep you on."

"Thank you, monsieur."

"Come back tomorrow at 7, prepared to work."

Feuilly thanked him again. A job! A real job. From someone who knew drawing and liked his work with a pen! Even the heavens seemed to smile on his fortune as the sun appeared properly for the first time in a week, peeking between the tattered grey clouds of Paris in winter. He felt lightheaded in his joy. Mireille had been right. A proper name, honest work – life could still happen. Work with a brush. How lucky that he had been so soundly rejected by the legal profession. What a chance that he had stopped to see Jacquemont. He very nearly danced his way home.

Coming across Lydie in the street, looking frozen and bedraggled after a night of work, he pulled her close and kissed her firmly.

"You're in a good mood," she said warily.

"I got a job! Painting!"

"No! Really?"

"A fanmaker. He says I've got real talent with a pen."

"Of course you do! Good thing he recognised it. So now you're going to be rich and respectable."

"Respectable, yes, but I hardly think I'll be rich. But to paint for a living!"

"That's lovely, really." The excitement had already faded from her voice. "Come see me later. I'm dead sleepy, Feuilly."

"Of course, of course." But he was disappointed that she cared more for her bed than for his changed circumstances.

He went home and retrieved the rest of the take from his last job from its hiding place. The bits of paste he hadn't bothered to flog to the jeweler would trade well enough in the Temple, get him appropriate working clothes and, with luck, a new pair of trousers. He owed three francs to Vivienne, but rent was due, and who knew what three sous a fan really meant? The three were set aside, along with the fifteen for the month's rent.

A few trades later, Feuilly had exchanged his flash wardrobe for something a little more appropriate – a dull short jacket, dark brown trousers, and stiff-soled boots. He kept his gentleman's boots and tailcoat, however, as it would hardly do to appear in the nicer gardens as the workman he really was. There was no money left to add to his little stock.

He slept poorly in his nervousness, and he ventured forth early to take coffee in the street with his fellow workman. By means of careful delay, he managed to arrive at the workshop just as the church bells signaled the hour. The other workers had already arrived and were setting up for the day under the glow of hanging lamps.

"Your job isn't to be an artist, understand? If I needed an artist, I'd have advertised for one. You're a colourist. Colour is your only concern."

"Yes, monsieur."

"You come in for the day, you get your paints from that cabinet, and you go straight to work. We work on the cheap stuff at dawn and at dusk; midday, when the light is strong, that's when the ivory and mother of pearl come out."

"Yes, monsieur."

"We work in groups, each person responsible for one colour, that way you don't contaminate your brush and make the colours muddy. If you fall behind that affects your group's pay for the day, not just yours."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Let's see." The tables were nearly full by now. "Aleçon, Laforêt, god only knows if Montant will show up. No, that won't do. Sophie! Here, Sophie, look after the new man. He'll join you and Pinon for today." Two women. The one who had benefit of her Christian name was quite blonde and rather pretty in her way, with rosy full cheeks and round eyes. The other was plainer in all respects – dull brown hair, thin face, narrow mouth, and several years older. "I don't hold with fraternisation, it's strictly surnames around here for man and woman, but if you can pronounce Sophie's name, I'm a monkey's uncle. Foreigners," he muttered as he wandered back to his desk.

"Sit here," Sophie told him. "You can do the background." Her voice was low, from the throat.

Feuilly took a seat and a brush. "What is your name?"

"Chrzyszczewska."

"What?"

She smiled. "Chrzyszczewska. My father and I came from Poland some years ago."

The design was terribly intricate. He had seen fans, certainly, but he had never looked at them closely. They were feminine things of no value to Jacquemont, no other use in the materials, so carefully carved and pierced and painted, when anyone could tell you a penny broadsheet would do just as well.

"Careful, you're going a little too dark," Mlle Pinon warned.

"Relax. You'll never make it all day if you are so tense. And if you relax, you will have a lighter touch," Sophie said kindly.

He tried. It was odd to be in a place of comfortable warmth and natural quiet. Carts rolled by in the street, people shifted in their seats or got up to get more montures or stretch their backs, the fire popped from time to time, but there was no buzz of conversation, no clatter of metal, no shouts from the foreman. Yet there was no fear, either, no sense that these people were desperate, that a hundred more could replace them at a whim. And when M. Cartoux put the lights out and opened a second crate, Feuilly saw why. He had been hired as a colourist. Others were inlayers, cutting and fitting mother of pearl into tortoiseshell. He continued to work with Mlle Pinon while Sophie set up an entire palette. She was a miniaturist, carefully copying nymphs into the medallions split across several sticks. Every person was an artist of some sort, and watching classical silks flow from Sophie's nimble fingers, Feuilly felt the full measure of his luck. That he had been chosen to work among such people – his attempts at art had been very good indeed.

"Keep up, keep up," Mlle Pinon muttered at him. "Some of us have rent to pay, can't afford your dawdling."

He redoubled his efforts but soon grew sloppy. M. Cartoux pulled him aside. "Walk if off. Take some water. I've never seen a new man that didn't beg for a break. We're not machines; we won't bit your fingers off if you don't keep up. But don't fuck up the merchandise!"

Feuilly did as he was told. Watching the carts outside helped the headache forming behind his eyes. And he did catch up while Mlle Pinon took a few minutes for a midday meal. But Sophie worked on. She did not work quickly – she studied the ivory sticks as she worked, careful to keep them identical, mindful of how they would overlap when the ribbon was threaded at last. When her nymphs were finished, Mlle Pinon filled in the guard while Feuilly caught up again with his cheap wooden models.

At the end of the day, Sophie glided off into the night. Feuilly wanted to follow her, but he was exhausted. So much detail. His right hand was sore from gripping the brush too tightly. He went straight to bed, not even stopping for a bite of bread or a cup of watery soup on the corner.

The next day was better. He knew what he was doing. Mlle Pinon did not look daggers at him at all. But the pretty Sophie had no time for him.

On the third day, he and Mlle Pinon finished the final crate of that pattern around noon. She pulled him outside to sit on the stairs with her while she ate a bit of bread as a midday meal.

"You're doing well. He'll keep you on, I'm sure."

"Not everyone lasts a week?"

"Not everyone lasts a day. What's your story?"

"What do you mean?"

"Feuilly. Too apt to be true, that name. How'd you end up here?"

"I draw and paint. Saw the advertisement in a right-wing rag. Came to check it out. Why does everyone comment on my name?"

"Back in the day – under the Directory was the last gasp, I think – fans were made of silk attached to the sticks. The silk was called the feuille. Not that there've been silk fans in twenty years. You were probably born as they went out of fashion."

"How do you know so much?"

"My mother was a colourist in the silk days. For M. Cartoux's father. After the twins were born, I needed something that'd pay a bit more if I wanted to afford school fees for the boys, so he took me on."

"You're married."

"You sound surprised."

"I've not known married women. I've been an orphan my whole life. What does your husband do?"

"Upholsterer. Funny how he works with a needle and I work with a brush."

"Fine industries, though. Is M. Cartoux a good master?"

"Good enough. No slave driver, that's for sure. Wouldn't have stuck it three years if he were."

"What do you know of Mlle Sophie?"

"You'll stay away from her if you know what's good for you. NO good comes of mixing too closely with foreigners. Especially foreigners like her."

"Why?"

"Her father's political. So just keep your head down and don't pay her any mind. She keeps herself to herself and that's for the best."

"She very talented, though. I'd like that job someday."

"Patience. If you've got the talent, it'll happen one day."

At the end of the day, he was paid six francs and eighteen sous. It was hardly a large payout, but with only four days of work, slow days at that, he was certain could earn at least ten francs the following week. It was good he had set aside the money for rent before embarking on this adventure in honest living. Sophie, yet again, had disappeared into the night.

Less tired that he had been all week, he gravitated to the tavern. He could only afford a bit of wine, but he wanted to see Vivienne and Lydie, to talk about how good – and exhausting – honest work felt.

Viv was proud of him and brought him brandy to celebrate. Lydie came in and slumped at his table. "I haven't seen you in ages," she whined.

"I have a new job. I told you."

"They don't work you all night."

"I'm tired at the end of the day. It's not easy. You're tired after your work."

"Well, mine's rather harder, isn't it?"

"Are you really saying I don't work?"

"It's not that hard for you, is it, sitting with a paintbrush all day?"

"No harder than lying on your back all night," he snapped.

Her eyes were wide, and she sounded hurt. "What was that for?"

"You don't take anything I do seriously."

"That's not true."

"You don't take anything I do legally that doesn't involve you seriously. I looked forward to seeing you tonight, but you don't care. You just want me when you want me. God forbid you be happy that I'm doing something I like."

"I am happy for you. But Mireille said you'd look after me."

"Can't do that with the spectre of prison hanging over me."

"Spectre?"

"Image, ghost, threat – Christ!"

"You know I'm too stupid to know all your fancy words."

He apologised half-heartedly. "I thought you might be happy for me."

"I am," she insisted. "But what if things go wrong?"

"Then I'm out of work. If things go wrong with Babet, I could end up dead or in jail. Honesty is best. It's not as if a life of crime has brought me riches."

"I have to work. Can I come tonight?"

He kissed her softly on the lips. "I'll leave the latch open."

Vivienne set a plate in front of him. "On the house. This calls for celebration."

"I wish Mireille were here to see. She'd be so proud."

"She would. And she's say 'What luck you've got! I always said you'd do whatever you wanted.'"

"There's a girl there – well, there are a few girls – but there's this one in particular. Rather pretty – not a full beauty like you are, but pretty enough – which is hard enough as it is. Pretty and modest. But here's the thing – she's so very talented. I colour in shapes. She paints the most perfect tiny little scenes, almost entirely freehand. And I have to sit next to her every day. It's torture!"

Viv sat down across from him. "Is it because she's pretty or because she's talented?"

"I don't know. I've never met anyone like her."

"What about Lydie?"

"I'm not in love. I don't know what I am, but I'm certainly not in love."

"She's a nice girl, really. Don't be so hard on her."

"I know. I just wish she could be happy for me. Mireille would have been so pleased."

"I think she is. It's just her way, expecting disappointment."

Lydie woke him when she slid into his bed late that night. "I'm sorry," she murmured, her face buried in his shoulder. "I'm happy if you're happy." They made love until dawn.

The work went better the longer he was there, but the rest of his life fell apart.

"A little bird told me you got yourself a job," Babet said one Saturday night. "Didn't you learn last time you're not too good for us?"

Feuilly told him to fuck off. He was only there to wait for Lydie, so he had no reason to talk to Babet and no patience to stay. But he was out of sorts when she came to him that night. "Do you think I'm too good for you?"

"You always have been." They made love anyway, but she wouldn't go to mass with him in the morning.

He started attending a different mass every week. On Ash Wednesday, he ran in late, having misjudged the length of the queue for blessings, but M. Cartoux merely nodded him in – it had been a right-wing advertisement he'd answered, after all. He was pleased to see that Mlle Sophie, alone of all the rest, had the cross on her pale forehead. There was a solidarity between them, he thought, now that they were proved the only devout Catholics in the workshop. But still she did not speak to him, and he lost wages that week because his tardiness put him behind.

On Palm Sunday, he accidentally discovered where she went to church. His many ventures had made him braver, and he no longer huddled at the rear of every church he entered. After the service, he turned and discovered her behind him. He nodded in acknowledgement, but she unexpectedly began to speak.

"M. Feuilly! I was certain that was you. You are of this parish?"

"No," he admitted. "I have no parish. I like seeing the different churches, hearing the different priests."

"How sad, to be a traveler in your own city. You have no family?"

He shook his head. "My mother died at the new year."

"I am sorry. My mother died in the winter, too, but many years ago. This is my father, Wojciech Chrzyszczewski."

"In this country, M. Albert." His accent was stronger than his daughter's. "My daughter speaks of your often." Feuilly flushed at the compliment.

"You should come to dinner," Sophie said.

"M. Cartoux forbids fraternisation." It sounded harsh, so he tried again. "I need this job. Please forgive me."

"Of course. Forgive me for my presumption."

"Not at all." Feuilly bid them good day and fled. At work, they made no mention of their encounter, yet Feuilly found himself going back to that church for the Easter service. He stayed in the back, however, and left quickly.

Lydie came to sleep with him one night, but all they did was sleep, and he woke her early, leaving her in the street as he went to work.

Sophie barely acknowledged him, but whether because she thought him rude or because she followed Cartoux's orders in his presence, Feuilly did not know. It pained him, but he did not know how to satisfy both his needs and his desires.

Cartoux pulled him aside one day after work. "You interested in some extra work?" Feuilly answered affirmatively. "I've got a friend. Runs a print shop. Has a small run he doesn't quite trust to his usual colourists."

"Is this illegal, monsieur?"

"I wouldn't call it – well – it's not strictly on the up-and-up, let's say. You don't have a problem with naked women, do you?"

"Of course not. I would appreciate the work."

"I'll have the sheets for you tomorrow. On your own time, with your paints, mind."

"Of course."

He got a franc a piece for them, fifty sheets in all. They took up a whole month of Sundays, and Lydie was furious, but fifty francs – an extra month's wages. So what if Lydie was angry.

At the end of May, without telling anyone, he gave up his room and took unfurnished lodgings closer to the workshop – and closer to the church Sophie and her father attended. His fifty francs bought him a proper bed, a cupboard, and a table with all four legs; he stole the rickety chair from his previous dwelling.

But he delayed breaking his final ties to the old neighbourhood. He couldn't remember anywhere else – his earliest memories, assuming grass and his mother were merely a dream, were of Mireille and Vivienne. His whole life had been lived there. But now it was over.

The moment he entered the street, he heard Lydie call his name. "I've looked everywhere for you!"

"I moved," he answered bluntly.

"And didn't tell me?"

"Why does your voice rise at the end as if it were a question?"

Lydie's face fell. "You needn't be so short. You're a real ass, you know."

"Took you long enough to notice."

"Why are you even here if you aren't here for me?"

"I owe Viv some money. Nice girl, Viv. Honest living. Notions of marriage," he added cruelly.

"You wouldn't," Lydie told him haughtily.

"Wouldn't what?"

"Ask her to marry you. She's an old maid already. And you promised Mireille you'd marry me." She looked at him in triumph. Ass or not, he had always kept his promises.

"Is that what she told you the night she died?"

"You promised her you'd marry me."

"I promised her I'd look after you!"

"And a fine job you've done."

"I gave you a choice. You chose to be a whore, and Mireille knew I'd never choose to be a pimp."

She was suddenly quiet. "So you're here to see Viv."

"Oh, don't look like that! I told you, I owe her some money. I'm paying back the last from Mireille's funeral."

"I'm sure I believe that."

"Believe what you like. I'm done with this nonsense. We were children, Lydie. It was nice while it lasted. But I've grown up. It's time you did, too. This isn't my future. It never was. I sure as hell don't want to marry Viv and serve the criminal classes the rest of my life. I'm an honest man now. I couldn't have you for a wife." He hadn't meant to be cruel in the end, but he couldn't seem to avoid it anymore.

"I see how the wind blows. You've got a new girl." He flushed, and she grabbed the upper hand. "Does she let you paint her naked?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. You weren't even special in that." Not that Sophie bore any resemblance to the pornographer's model, but naked women were naked women, and he had honestly painted one.

"As long as it's not Viv!"

"What would you do if it were? Scratch her eyes out?" he mocked.

"Fuck off."

"Gladly," he replied coldly. Best to have it all out, he told himself. Did Mireille really promise marriage? Or is that Lydie's interpretation of "Feuilly will take care of you?" Not that it mattered – even if she did turn to honest work, he could still never marry her.

"Viv!" he called up to a window where he saw a carpet snap like a long green tongue.

"Feuilly?" her excited voice called down. "It's been too long! Just go in the kitchen; I'll be right in!"

Her father greeted him with his usual glare, and Viv quickly pulled him away to the stairwell. "How've you been?" She looked at him the way he remembered her looking at the confidence man – it felt as if he had just given her the drawing yesterday, and yet he had been arrested two years ago.

"I'm well." He found himself stroking her cheek like a proper lover. "I brought the three francs I still owe you. And a warning. I ran into Lydie on my way here. I told her I had a new girl to keep her off my back. You'll probably hear of it. But it isn't true."

"So nothing has happened with that girl at the workshop."

"Nothing can ever happen unless one of us gets a job somewhere else. I just need Lydie off my back. I can't do what she wants, and I can't bear to watch her sink further. It's pretty well good and dead now. And there's no Sophie. Or anyone else, for that matter. Is that all right, that there isn't a me and you, either?" he added gently.

"I never expected a marriage proposal, Feuilly. Who'd want to chain himself to this place?"

"It's not that."

"No chains at all for you, is that it? Or are you finally admitting I'm fat and ugly and much too old?"

"Never," he insisted. "I said you were a Rubens, and I mean it. You are beautiful. But no chains. I can't climb if I'm not free. I've got work with a brush, in any case. I've begun. Can't give in to a wife and brats."

"Dear god. Brats. Maybe I will be an old maid."

"You'll be a fine one."

"You sound so final."

"I don't think I'll see you again."

"Just like that?"

"I have to break with this place completely if I'm ever going to do better. You're the only honest person I know in this neighbourhood. I have to say goodbye."

"I once thought I loved you."

"You love every pretty face." He had meant it as a joke, but the words caught in his throat. "Goodbye, Viv." He kissed her forehead and slipped a five franc piece into her apron pocket with the dexterity of a pickpocket. She could find it when he was gone.


	20. Chapter 20

A new neighbourhood was not the magic solution – yes, Feuilly was solely among honest people now, but a week after his final break, he felt isolated and out of place. The long light of summer meant longer workdays and a bit more money in the end, but the workshop was stifling in the heat. Cartoux would not open the windows for fear dust would contaminate the work, so the fanmakers boiled in the sun. There was more detail work done in summer, partly to take advantage of the longer days of pure light but also in preparation for the heavy decoration of the fine ladies' winter fashions.

Finally, one evening in despair despite his fatigue, Feuilly stepped into a café around the corner from his new room. The smoky air was stifling here, too, but he swore he could feel the comradeship in the air as well. He felt it shutting him out, even as his sous were accepted for a cup of watered wine. Yet then he heard his name across the room. "He works with my daughter," M. Albert announced to his crowd as he ushered Feuilly to the crowded table. "We must speak French so this gifted young man can follow us."

Nearly all the men had unpronounceable names more or less hastily adapted for the French tongue. One introduced himself as Czartoryski, but it soon appeared this was not his name but a nickname, the name of a great Polish patriot. In casting about for company, Feuilly had landed in a hotbed of insurrection.

Sophie's father and his friends took great delight over the next weeks in educating him about the glory of Poland – the first Christian kingdom in Europe, a Catholic outpost among Greek heresy, an independent nation of free men deliberately destroyed by powerful monarchical neighbours who resented and feared Polish freedom, the several partitions that destroyed the kingdom entirely, the greatness of the French Emperor who had reinstated the Duchy of Warsaw, the evil of the Russians who had taken it over after his disastrous flight back west. This was the lower rung of the Polish opposition in Paris, the loyal servants who followed their masters into penniless exile. But plots were afoot – plots were always afoot, Feuilly soon realised – to return in triumph. The French police did not much bother them because the main thrust of their group was against Russia, that whore of an empire, empty of all sense and fierce in denial of liberty. Or so he managed to decipher after several evenings listening to much argument in bad French, conducted in that language whenever the known police spies were about, he was told. One must play for the audience. Most of the company had been years in Paris – nearly ten, in the case of M. Albert and his daughter – yet they still thought only of the homeland.

So when M. Albert found him after mass on Sunday and invited him again to dine at his home, he said yes. After all, he was fraternising with the father, not the daughter, though in truth he continued to frequent their flat because Sophie would read poetry in her odd buzzing language, and she appreciated when he spoke of art. But his evenings were mostly spent in an eager indoctrination to intrigue. Sophie had called him gifted, and whatever else she had said had earned him the comradeship of these would-be revolutionaries. Occasionally other Frenchmen would drop by – more than once, Feuilly saw a radical student who seemed to own a collection of flash waistcoats – but Feuilly himself was the only constant French member of the group.

Poland was like a fairyland to him, all birches and snowy hills where free men rode in sledges all winter, their women rosy-cheeked in the cold. Sophie's life was certainly the prologue to a fairy tale – the daughter of a minor nobleman, she had spent the first half of her life as a lady but now, having been chased from their home by the Russians because their lord had taken up the cause of freedom, she lived a pauper's life in exile, waiting for the letter that would call her back to her birthright. Even her name was a disguise - "Sophie" sounded so workaday compared to her real name. Her father called her "Zosia", which sounded more like an exotic Eastern princess than a painter of fans.

Feuilly ask Mme Pinon if she had heard that Sophie was a nobleman's daughter; she just scoffed and said they were all nobles, that in the East, there were more nobles than peasants. How did she know? They were all in artistic trades – it was all they were good for. The higher nobles tutored the bourgeois of Paris in mathematics and music and art; their vassals fell to the luxury trades. All were poor and none were effective, either as workers or as revolutionaries. But Feuilly thought Mme Pinon was simply unimaginative, that with a husband and children to think of, of course she could not see the romantic truth behind the quotidian necessities.

In the cool morning presaging another hot September day, it seemed all the churchbells in Paris erupted in a clangor as Feuilly set out his paints. Since the workday had not yet begun, he and the rest of the early arrivals rushed down the stairs after Cartoux in search of the reason for the noise. They joined an equally curious throng, a far greater crowd than was usual of a morning. From the nearest church, they heard the canon shout, "The king is dead! Long live the king!"

Feuilly's heart sank, and he crossed himself. Not that he had ever thought much about the king, but there was something saddening about every bell in Paris tolling for a single death. And he had not been a bad king. He had not been a particularly good king, either, perhaps, but he had been there, letting the government do its work, guiding France back towards calm prosperity after the restive Hundred Days. Paris would suddenly be very different with Monsieur in charge.

He found he had fallen into step with Cartoux as they walked back to the workshop. "What a way to start the day, eh?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"I'll need you to stay late. There's money to be made here."

"Is that all that interests you in this news?"

"It's the only thing good in this news. Come, you don't look forward to Monsieur's coronation."

"I have no opinion, monsieur. Politics are the province of the rich."

"They're about to become even more exclusive," Cartoux added bitterly.

"I thought you were a conservative."

"Because I advertised in their bloody rag? Wanting sober and literate employees is a far cry from wholly believing in divine right and kingly prerogative."

"I am surprised you dare speak."

"This morning is my last chance to say anything. Come, you're no conservative either, even if you do go to church and once read the _Gazette de France_."

"Why do you think that?"

"Look at you. Besides, I've never seen a conservative with real talent."

The day went on with far more conversation than usual, and Cartoux, instead of telling them to pipe down, disappeared for two hours in the middle of the afternoon. The inlayers, deprived of supervision, joined the painters and annoyed the women with political talk.

"So Monsieur ascends. Holiday's over, lads, we're back to where the revolution started."

"Don't be ridiculous. He can't singlehandedly destroy the Legislative Chambers."

"What have the Legislative Chambers ever done for you, anyway?" Mme Pinon snapped. "This whole thing is none of our business."

"None of yours, maybe," Aleçon retorted. He turned back to Feuilly and Laforêt. "Nothing's going to be the same. We just lost an atheist and got a Jesuit in replacement. Compulsory attendance at mass and more power to the priests."

"It won't be that bad. We've been hearing plenty from Monsieur before now – more than from the King himself, really. He probably got half his followers into position already, not even waiting for today. You know things have been rather different for a while with the police, increased censorship, all that. Look at the press laws – that law of tendency a couple years back? That's Monsieur's doing. We've been living under him already. It hasn't been that awful."

"You're an idiot."

Feuilly kept his mouth shut and just listened. He hadn't really paid attention to the machinations of his own government, not when he could listen to the Poles or read about the war in Greece. Every place had seemed far more interesting than Paris. But now it seemed he was the only man the Tuileries had not interested.

Cartoux returned with a box and the inlayers returned to work. Their misbehaviour was not even mentioned. At the end of the day, as everyone packed up, Cartoux called for Feuilly, Aleçon, and Sophie to stay behind.

"Today's news represents a change in the market. We've got a funeral and a coronation to plan for." He tossed a wooden monture to Aleçon. "See what you can do about dying this black to create a mourning pattern. I don't know that we can get a shipment of ebony immediately, and we've got to get on this straight away. Specific to the King, mind." He turned to Feuilly and Sophie. "Now, my dears. We've got a coronation to plan for. Monsieur loves high decoration and anything that resembles the past. I don't think either of you have seen any of these before." He spread three old fans with silk leaves. "This is the old style. Went out during the Revolution. I think it's time to bring it back, especially since I've got the two of you. Start thinking of designs. Go to the Louvre on Sunday, see if anything appeals to your sense of history. Particularly you," he pointed at Feuilly. "I want to see what you can come up with by Monday. Here's the latest image I can find of Monsieur. Take these with you, too. The sooner I can get some mock ups to the Palace, the sooner I have a chance at getting a contract for the official coronation. And a Palace contract will be the only reason for me to hope his reign lasts a great while."

Though his initial instinct was to go to the tavern to see what the exiles were willing to say about the news, Feuilly went home with one of the fans and the etching of Monsieur in order to get started. But after copying Monsieur's face, he found he could not really get started. Monsieur was very conservative, everyone knew that. His accession would mean more attention to the church, greater power for the monarchy, all that. The Bonapartists would be marginalised but what remained of the true aristocracy was almost certainly happy with this news. The men of the stock exchange were probably unhappy. But what did that really mean? And should he be looking to old forms – the Rubens and Michelangelo of his book – or to the forms of the Ancien Régime – the sample fans he and Sophie had been given? Or to modern work, of which he knew nothing other than it surely was as different to the lady with wide skirts on a swing that was on this particular fan as Giotto was to Michelangelo.

The Poles were still at the tavern, but they were distinctly subdued. M. Albert greeted Feuilly and nodded toward the bar, where one of the usual police spies was watching them again. "You may want to stay away for a bit. Until we know more of the new king's intentions, we will have to speak our own language. We must learn our audience all over again."

He nodded. "_Rozumiem,_" he replied, hoping that it was the correct word for "I understand".

"_Pan rozumie_? He understands!" M. Albert announced with delight to all the Poles. "Such a bright boy my Zosia discovered."

Feuilly bid them good evening, "_Dobry wieczór_." His frequent intercourse with Sophie and her father had managed to put a few words of their strange language in his head - "I understand", "good evening", "hello", "yes", "no", "I remember" - the basic words of a life in exile. Rather than return to his empty room, he went to see Sophie.

"Are you certain this is wise?" she asked. "My father is not here to chaperone us."

"Do you think I would do anything against your virtue?" he asked, a little hurt by the implication.

"Of course not," she replied quickly. "I do not think he would think so, either. You are a perfect gentleman. But what will people think if I am seen entertaining you privately?"

"No one will think anything of it. I just want to talk about work."

She shook her head but smiled. "Come into the kitchen with me – we can talk while I make dinner."

The kitchen was shared with two other families on the floor: it was obvious that Sophie had a caller, but they were hardly left alone. Feuilly helped her fill dumplings as they talked. Unlike the few times Viv had allowed him in the kitchen, it was nice to feel of use, even if he was rather inept. Sophie had to show him more than once how to crimp the pastry together so the fillings would not fall out into the water.

"What did M. Cartoux mean when he told you to go the Louvre? I thought that was the palace."

"The government art collections are on public display there."

"Is that how you know so much about art?"

"I've never been. Can't afford it. I have a book I – uhm – rescued from a pawnshop," he lied quickly. "The pawnbroker didn't know what he had. I'm not sure a visit would be all that helpful, anyway. The newspapers say the Salon is up, which means it's all new work right now, and I'm not sure that's really the best thing for Monsieur."

"He is a traditionalist."

"Very much so. We need something very ornate, the opposite of classical." He started drawing curlicues in the flour on the table until Sophie smacked his hand playfully. "Sorry." He rubbed them out and went back to crimping dumplings closed. "But the point still stands."

"But he is not the one who will buy these."

"And that's the problem. How to mix a sense of today with something that will also appeal to the palace."

"Perhaps we should consider seeing the Salon. How expensive is it?"

"I don't know."

"And my father would have to come with us. It would be inappropriate if he did not."

"Of course. But that makes three to pay for."

A woman frying onions interjected, "How long have you been in this city? Sundays at the Louvre are free."

"They are?"

"Idiots," she muttered. "Always have been." She walked away, carrying her fragrant pan with her.

"How did you not know this?" Sophie asked.

Feuilly felt his face grow hot. "The people who raised me didn't go in for this sort of thing," he explained defensively.

"But you read the newspapers."

"They don't make that part of it clear, probably to keep people like us out. And that being the case, we are going," he insisted. "Even if it turns out to cost money, we are going."

He did not much like the way Sophie looked at him, screwing her lips and asking, "Are you sure that is right?"

"Yes. We must do the things that are permitted or else they will be taken away."

She turned away to salt the pot of water she had put on to boil. "Will you stay to dinner?"

"I shouldn't."

"I have some mushrooms and onions if you are worried we have not made enough pierogi."

"It's not that."

When she looked at him, her face was slightly flushed from the heat of the stove. "You have been far more help than any man has call to be."

"We're going after mass on Sunday."

"I will talk to my father. But do not be angry if it does not happen. Anger is not good for you."

"Your father is angry about many things."

"But you are not my father," she said gently. She put her hand on his shoulder, as if she might make a far more personal gesture than her formal address had ever hinted at, but at the sound of her father's voice, she pulled away as if she had been caught doing something naughty.

"I am in the kitchen, Tata!" she called.

"Ah, M. Feuilly. Are you staying to dinner?"

"No, thank you, monsieur. I was simply discussing business with Mlle Sophie." He bowed his way out, feeling angry at the interruption that had so rudely pulled him down from the elation of Sophie's touch.


	21. Chapter 21

At mass in the morning, M. Albert approached him. "Zosia tells me you and she wish to go to the Louvre this afternoon."

"It is for work," Feuilly insisted.

"Yes, that is what she says. I think this very good. We will all go to see the important paintings."

Sophie of course went on her father's arm, leaving Feuilly to follow behind, feeling like a lackey. It was a long, hot, dusty walk down crowded streets, and he spent the entire time in a resentful sulk. He knew better than to have expected anything else – M. Albert was a nobleman; Sophie was a lady; he was a thief and a murderer – but Sophie had seemed to care more for him than she ought, and it was a hard fall back to earth.

They joined the crowd slowly making its way inside the palace, which was even hotter than the street with the press of bodies. Paintings were hung floor to ceiling in the Salon Carré, the ceilings so high that the art disappeared into murkiness. Marble sculptures on tall pedestals blocked the view of other paintings that had at least been hung at eye level. It was difficult to see anything through the noisy crowd. Feuilly found that if he looked up, he had a better chance of seeing something than if he fought through the mass of shoulders and hats to see what might have been in front of his face.

Sophie looked astonished by it all, and Feuilly feared he looked equally impressed. He, who had thrown mud at the elephant in the Jardin des Plantes! (The monkeys threw things back, he and his now scattered accomplices had quickly learned.) Impressed by a room of oil and canvas. This may not have been the great men of the past, the Michelangelos and Giottos and Rembrandts, but perhaps one or even two might be a great man of the future, and here they all were to be judged and deemed genius or failure. So many paintings, actual full colour paintings, not etchings that could only ever really be a shadow of themselves or prints pretending to be chalk drawings. Oil on canvas, as thick upon the walls as if they were papered in art.

Many of the paintings were very large; a greater number were very small and filled in the irregular gaps between the large ones. There were portraits and landscapes, ships and farmers, ancient heroes and medieval knights. Feuilly did not know where to start looking – the entire world was on the walls around him and all of Paris was crowded in to look at it. Sophie's eyes were shining with delight – he managed to note that much even as he was overwhelmed by the bounty. Even without Imperial armies tramping across the borders of Europe, Paris was the centre of the world.

Not even thinking of her father, Feuilly took Sophie's hand and pulled her into the fray, pushing into the crowd moving slowly in circular fashion, trying to see up close everything they might. The great canvases commanded attention first. None of them could afford the catalogue – indeed, it was only by inquiry among the other patrons that they learned there was a catalogue – so they stumbled along in blind adoration of everything without names or titles to attach to anything.

Sophie pointed out a young woman being chastised by a cardinal; Feuilly found a Roman army on the march. Some small pictures of ships in harbour caught his eye, while Sophie was attracted to a genre painting of a young woman with a harp. Their entire purpose for being there was forgotten in the shifting enthusiasms of the moment.

A very large canvas, nearly the largest there, drew Feuilly's eye. The triangular form of the figures against the eerie plain of the sea and sky stood out from the crowd of other works. He stood staring at it for what felt the longest time. The pale figures, dead and dying, the desperate grasping at nothing by the doomed, reminded him so much of a Michelangelo Last Judgment but with an urgency the etching could not manage.

"I can't believe he's exhibited that again," one of the other spectators said to his companion. "Wasn't once enough?"

"This is a slightly different version, I think."

"It's an attack on the King, different version or no. The Medusa was hard enough to bear the first time."

"The English loved it, so I heard. Paid him a fortune just for exhibiting it."

"The English can have it."

They moved on, but still Feuilly stared. So this was the famous painting of the wreck of the Medusa. It was even better than any newspaper description – the struggle was so vibrant.

"What's taken your fancy?" Sophie asked. But when he pointed, singling out the black man at the apex of the pyramid, she sniffed, called him morbid, and tried to interest him in a luminous religious painting that had more in common with Giotto than with Michelangelo. Louis XIII giving his crown and scepter to the Virgin was not even well painted, he thought – Louis seemed so flat compared to the dying sailors. But then he remembered his duty – Monsieur would like this one very much, and the style was such that it could be shrunk for a fan with little loss, unlike M. Géricault's figures.

"She seems a bit simpering for the Holy Mother, doesn't she?" he asked Sophie. She sighed and shook her head.

They pushed through a doorway under a very large equestrian portrait to enter the equally crowded second of the two rooms of the exhibition. Here, Feuilly could not help noticing again the pale forms of death, this time in beautifully curving layers contrasting with Géricault's pyramid. The collapsed dead and dying, and the old woman staring at God or more Turks, took on sinuous forms.

"Do you only like paintings of death?" Sophie asked.

He did not know how to answer. He knew death, better than she knew death, and these paintings were not of death. If they were meant to be of death, then they were jokes, utter failures. But they were not about death at all – the beauty in the forms was, paradoxically, about life. The raft carried many dead men, and several of them did indeed look dead, painted from corpses, but not starving and rotten, yet it also carried survivors. It could be painted because men lived to tell the tale. The same was true for this massacre of Greeks. It could be painted because the Greeks would triumph. There was beauty because there was survival. The writhing of the damned in the Last Judgment was beautiful because it was a celebration of life – the damned had lived without apology, and now they suffered without apology. In hunger, in cold, in pain, we learn our limits, and we know what it is to be alive. But he could never explain the beauty in the harshness of life to a nobleman's daughter, even one who struggled to earn her living alongside him. He finally said, "You must support the Greeks."

"I do. Everyone does. It is terribly important, what is happening to the Greeks. But to exhibit them cut down – it is sad, and possibly not appropriate."

"It is a rallying cry for support."

"Then it should be in pamphlets, not in an official exhibit of pictures."

"It should be both places." M. Albert had caught up with them again. "This, the Russians and Prussians would do to us."

"The rich, who would not bother with pamphlets, will see, and perhaps they will understand more than just that Lord Byron was killed. The peoples of Europe must join together to secure freedom for all, and support should not come from English lords looking for adventure but from all governments who wish for secure territory and strong borders. A nation suppressed is a dangerous population."

"You learn well. Let us pray the Turks are learning this lesson, too, and that the tsar may take it to heart."

"All men talk about is politics," Sophie muttered.

Feuilly apologised to her. "I shall pay less attention to the morbid paintings," he promised. He had already determined to come back the following week in order to examine them more closely. He was gratified that she took his arm, her father following now, the chaperone to see that they did not turn an art exhibition into a liaison.

It was not that the paintings in this room were less interesting but that the sensation of Sophie on his arm was overwhelming. Feuilly seemed to notice less, even as he talked more. As they moved around the room, pointing out the paintings to each other, her closeness, her touch, seemed to send the rest of the room into another world, so that he and she stood alone, in a way that had never happened to him before. It was a beautiful and terrifying feeling – she would always be a nobleman's daughter, and the most he would ever be permitted was to escort her to a crowded public exhibition with her father constantly in trail. But she had taken his arm, in choice, without his seeking her favour, and that pleased him.

Until the clouds caught his eye and suddenly even Sophie seemed to disappear. It was the clouds – he did not notice the cart for so long because the clouds, the towering, tumbling, luminous clouds, took all his attention. The clouds, the twisted old leaning trees that had none of the false perfection of the other landscapes, landscapes that were so much smaller than this huge canvas as if they knew they deserved only to be in its shadow. The river, the quaint little mill, at last the cart, the little dog on the bank. It was tangible and sketchy all at once, the brushstrokes not hidden in a perfect glaze as everything else he had seen, yet far more real somehow despite that technical imperfection. He could almost see the way the rough cart would jostle through the ford, the horses stepping from the hard packed dirt of the bank, breaking the shine of the river. As if a memory from long ago had returned, because he never saw horses try to ford the Seine, but he knew how they moved in the change from dirt to river. That past life of mother and grass and sunlight must have had horses and a river, too. He felt he could not stare enough, even as people pushed past him.

"It has a medal," Sophie told him in his reverie. "The judges liked it as much as you seem to."

"A medal?"

"See?" She pointed out the little gold medal pinned to the frame. "A top prize."

"It's the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life."

"It is lovely. The clouds are almost real."

"The boat!" he exclaimed, pointing. "Look at the boat!" Such an unnecessary detail but one that seemed to make of the painting not an object of strict beauty but a record of a real moment in time that happened to be beautiful.

Sophie shook her head and tried to pull him along, though she smiled this time. Feuilly, not ready to go, found himself bumping directly into a dark, well-dressed young man who was nearly a head taller than he, making the embarrassment even worse.

"Please forgive me, monsieur," he tried to apologise.

"Not at all. It is so crowded on Sundays." It was suddenly evident that the young man was only about his own age. "I am glad to see you enjoy this painting so much."

"Is it yours?" Feuilly asked confusedly.

"Not at all," the young man grinned. "I do not even know the artist. But he is a great genius, isn't he? I find I come back to look at it again and again, ever since the Salon opened."

He was a very well dressed young gentleman, with a fine voice, and Feuilly felt distinctly out of place – what interest did a young gentleman have in a workman who could not watch where he was going? He did not notice, could not stop, the hand going straight for his hair, the fingers twisting a loose curl in nervousness. Still, not to converse with the young gentleman, since he was so desperate to talk to someone, would have been rude. "Might I ask who the artist is, monsieur?" He cursed himself for not having a proper comment to make.

"An Englishman, if you can believe that. A Mr Constable. The future of art seems to be in England. I have it on excellent authority that M. Delacroix repainted the background of his Massacre the day before the Salon opened because Mr Constable's clouds were an epiphany."

"As they should be. Such dynamism – you can feel them rushing by."

"Art should not be static."

"True art is never static. Michelangelo could not be static if he tried. Even Giotto is a genius because he was the first to not be stuck in place."

"I'm not sure I'd go that far – there are some lovely sculptures still extant in many of the churches of Paris. Have you been to Italy?"

Feuilly reddened. "I have a book."

"I have never been to Italy, either," the young man admitted. "Perhaps when I finish my medical studies."

"But painting and sculpture are too different to be compared. I prefer the gargoyles at Notre Dame to that." He pointed at a statue of a collapsing woman, her hair in rigid curls.

"Well, who would not? Nanteuil has no sense of the fluidity of marble. To make that comparison is to insult the gargoyles."

"Do you know all the artists?"

Now the medical student flushed slightly. "I memorised the catalogue. The Salon has been open for three weeks, and I have managed to come five times. If it were not for my studies, I would be here more often."

"You are a great scholar."

"No. An enthusiast, only. Like yourself."

"This is only my first time."

"But I see in your face that you will come back. The Salon always has at least one or two paintings that take hold of the men of taste but are usually overlooked by the government. Mr Constable's first prize is gratifying, though the picture will never be bought into the government collection."

"The government buys the prize winners?"

"The government buys what it likes, which is not always the same. It also buys what is popular, so that people have a reason to pay to see the government collection in the months when the Salon is not up. M. Géricault's friends are trying to sell his Raft of the Medusa to the government, but the government does not want to pay nearly what it is worth. Still, until yesterday's events, they were not too embarrassed to make the acquisition. We shall see if it goes through under Monsieur."

"It is not to his taste, one would think."

"Not at all. The government did not come out of that scandal well, if I remember rightly."

"Would you say that Monsieur's taste is more akin to that one that looks like an altarpiece in the other room?"

"Altarpiece? Oh, yes, dear lord, what a travesty of the Salon. Yes, I would believe he would adore it. What was Ingres thinking, submitting that? He had a really beautiful Odalisque several years ago, and a Roger and Angelica that I fear I would like much less now than I did then. But that is a real altarpiece, commissioned by a church, which is not at all the sort of thing that should be submitted to the Salon. But I am quite certain Monsieur adores it, and politically, it will turn out to have been an excellent submission. M. Ingres will gain great favour from that painting. Not that religious art should have a place in a government show. But listen to me, descending into politics where it has no place."

"I don't mind at all. I think we are of the same mind; you have been in a position to have more information."

"I am not so certain of that, but many people in this city are unhappy with the change in government. There is at least that much agreement. And talk of politics is already less desirable than it was two days ago, which in itself should halt the conversation, but more importantly, your girl has left you, undoubtedly from sheer boredom."

Feuilly restrained himself from articulating the curse that came to his lips. "I must find her. Please forgive me. It was a real pleasure talking to you, monsieur."

"If you like, there are a group of us who meet at the Café Variétés after the doors here close on Sundays. Enthusiasts merely, not artists."

"I do not think I am quite the sort of person you seek to befriend, monsieur."

"What does income matter when discussing the merits of art?"

Despite himself, Feuilly was flattered by the invitation. "I will consider it."

"Please do. It is a pleasure to see someone of my own age with taste."

When he caught up to Sophie again, she was on her father's arm. "What did that man want from you?"

"Just to talk."

"He's a gentleman. It isn't right."

"I'm not a peasant," he muttered. Perhaps it had not been, strictly speaking, appropriate, but it had been nice. Just as that young lawyer had been nice, until the accusation of forgery. To be treated as a man of intelligence, to be invited, even by mistake, to meet at a café and spend an evening in discussion with other men of intelligence, was flattering. More than flattering – it was a necessity. The Poles did not ask his opinion because he was a student and an outsider. Babet did not ask his opinion because he never asked anyone's opinion, but he had at least treated Feuilly with the same respect he treated any other specialist. Cartoux acknowledged his talents, gave him charge of this design scheme, but he had seen his work. To be treated by a complete stranger, upon initial meeting, as an intellectual equal was a feeling Feuilly had not had since he had left his old life, since he was no longer the famous young lockpick. He had felt a foot taller when he bid goodbye to the medical student, appropriate or not.

But it was not appropriate. Just as Sophie's obvious affection for him was not appropriate. Or was it? Had he made himself the family servant? Was that the way in which she sought to calm his moods and take his arm? Because affection for a servant, attachment to a servant, was always conditional on service. Did she care for him the only way Babet had ever cared for him, because he did something of use? It was impossible that she saw him as a suitor if she was willing to walk through the Salon on his arm. And what did the medical student really see? What am I to him? A shabby clerk? A romantic? Would he have dared have such a conversation with a workman? Invite a workman to meet his friends? Impossible. The whole day had been a fraud, from Sophie to the medical student. He had tricked one and been tricked by the other.

But the paintings – they were not frauds. M. Constable was more true than anything Feuilly had yet seen. And he knew he would be back on the following Sunday, just to look, despite the medical student. Constable was truth.


	22. Chapter 22

They were both bent over the paper, Feuilly's loose hair shading it from one side.

"This is very good," Sophie told him, "but should the Holy Mother be the symbol or should it be Christ?"

"The Holy Mother could be confused at first for Marianne, and that's the point."

"Then the Christ Child in her arms should be making the blessing. You need fewer people in the crowd if we are to produce any great number of these."

"What do you think of the reverse?"

"That one is perfect."

He smiled. Sophie had called his design perfect. But there was still work to be done on the primary design. He quickly sketched out a replacement Virgin for Sophie's approval before beginning all over again on a fresh sheet of writing paper.

"And instead of a crowd, try one or two representatives of each estate, not all of France."

"Six people behind the king is going to look ridiculous."

"No, let me show you." She grabbed the pencil out of his hand and started sketching in the margin of the original sheet. Her sketching was nothing like his, very light and white and open, without detail. She may have had lessons once, but she was a child then and still drew as a child, though she painted as a woman. Not that Feuilly was complaining, really, but he knew that copying the rounded fullness and shading of the etchings led to a better result than her light, flat, blank figures. "And then you simply add in some lines here, to suggest a crowd, not to draw it all as you did here. We can wash it all in darkness and it will look like a shadowy multitude."

He did not want to give in, but she made an important point. It was a fan, not a painting. It was for use, not for show. "I keep the cardinal, though?"

"Yes, I like that he will add a bit of colour."

The evening had already grown late. M. Albert dozed rather than filled his duty as chaperone. They drew by lamplight, and there would be no opportunity to have a painted version as well as the original drawing for Cartoux. Feuilly was doing all the work, but then, Cartoux had said he wanted to see what he, not Sophie, could pull from the Salon. He could have gone home, but it was nice to use M. Albert's lamp oil and have Sophie's opinion. And with M. Albert asleep, it was the only chance he had yet had to be alone with Sophie.

But to be alone with Sophie was to remember that he was permitted to be alone with Sophie. That she could think it wrong that he engage a gentleman in conversation but appropriate that he sit and work for her approval. If he were a threat to her virtue, M. Albert would not be asleep. How could the servant threaten the lady of the house?

Feuilly knew that they trusted him, not merely because they did not know his history, but because he had kowtowed to the authority of the father, the church, and the employer. He had never made any sign that he was there to court Sophie, because he knew he could never court Sophie. It did not even matter that she was a lady; he, as a thief and a murderer, was certain he could never bring himself to tie an honest woman to him, and he would never take a dishonest one. And Sophie could ask for his help and sit with him in the kitchen because, as a lady, she had the privilege of choosing how she saw him rather than worrying about how he saw her. What he feared was not that he would lose control and kiss her as he so wanted to do; it was that someone would start to talk about him as Sophie's caller and all the acceptance he had gained in these months would have to end.

But as long as he was the lackey, the trusted family servant, just as M. Albert was to his lord, he was permitted to do his work with Sophie in their companionable flat. Even if she thought him acting above his station when participating in a conversation a gentleman had started.

Cartoux praised the drawing, particularly when Sophie explained how she could colour it with a few washes since the details would be printed as part of the outline. "The shading is a nice touch," he said in respect to the fleurs-de-lys that flanked the portrait of Charles X that Feuilly had designed as the simple reverse.

But the drawings were for the palace, not for Cartoux, and the painters were relegated to following the directions Aleçon had developed for dying and preparing the montures for a mourning pattern. He had cleverly edited the original carvings to insert a silhouette of the late king to make a product none of the undertakers of Paris could have supplied on Saturday, and he had preparations for false jet fleurs-de-lys for the guards, but everything had to be black before he and Laforêt could insert the decoration. It was quick work, though repetitive, as alternating washes of iron and gall had each to dry before a final layer of soot and, at last, varnish could be applied. Ordinarily, when Cartoux worked mourning fans, he ordered ebony montures and the inlayers added additional details. But the ordinary mourning fans were exported to rich Spaniards; these had to get to the Parisian bourgeois markets before the week was out.

Because this merchandise was an entirely speculative venture, the pay was significantly reduced. Moreover, since he was attempting to curry favour with the Palace, Cartoux did not open the workshop on Thursday, so that his workers could instead support the funeral cortège. They had, with long hours the previous three days, produced several hundred fans of Aleçon's design, which had been delivered late Wednesday night to various shop owners with whom Cartoux had friendly relations. If they sold well, then more would be produced during the month Louis XVIII's body lay at St Denis before the burial proper.

The day of the funeral procession was grim and threatened rain. Curiosity brought Feuilly out, though M. Albert had to work and Sophie preferred to stay inside. Standing among the crowd, he felt profoundly out of place. The urchins gamboled, the cortège was impressive, he could almost picture volunteering to be one of the torch-bearing "paupers" as he had been a rented mask for Mardi Gras in past years. He was surrounded by the labourers, the honest working people of Paris, and he felt more kinship with the paupers in the cortège and with the urchins looking for stray bourgeois who might have something in their pockets. The army battalions with their plumes and polished rifles left him unmoved. The lack of clergy in the procession was an odd comfort – while Feuilly believed in God and the church, what Aleçon had said about Monsieur's preferences made him uneasy. Faith was such a beautiful, necessary thing, and to force observance without faith was monstrous. The primacy of the army in this cortège was perhaps the last symbol of the secularism Louis had chosen.

The crowd on the other side of the street, seen through the gaps in the procession, attracted his attention more than the procession itself. Here he could see the gamins, the whores, the thieves, the honest workers, fathers with children on their shoulders and mothers with babes in their arms, given an unsought holiday and taking their children to see the greatest public display Paris had seen since the fall of the Empire. A sight for a generation. And something in the back of his mind wanted to strike at it, smash it down, wipe the cortège from the street, for what right did it have? Was it mourning a decent king or celebrating the passing of the crown to a divisive, reactionary figure who thought nothing of the people standing here? Louis gave us the Charter; Charles will give us the Church. Not the Church I know, that I ran to, that speaks morality and duty and charity, but the Church of the past, that had to be destroyed by the Revolution, that supported the nobility and ambition and power, the old Popes with their mistresses and illegitimate children.

And cathedrals, he reminded himself. But would the bourgeois permit cathedrals?

The crowd died away, chattering gaily about the spectacle they had just witnessed, and Feuilly was uncertain whether he should shout that they should be mourning or just move along in silence. Deciding that he would only end up bruised or arrested if he did what he wanted, he selected silence and went into the nearest café to read the newspapers over a bowl of coffee he could not really afford.

The papers were mostly filled with eulogies of the late king. One of the remaining leftist papers had a brief note confirming earlier rumours of a massacre at Psara, in Greece – the entire civilian population had been destroyed by the Turks.

But the papers did not hold his attention, and he soon took to wandering the streets. He got as far as the Louvre, which was closed due to the funeral celebrations, then pushed through the slums of the Cité to approach Notre Dame again. He had not tried to climb the towers for some time, and the old bellringer was gone. Staring at the familiar wooden door that had been shut in his face, he realised his dissatisfaction, and he went inside the nave.

A mass was being said, the clergy's response to how few were permitted to participate in the funeral cortège. Feuilly leaned against a pillar and listened to the Latin chants. Can beauty be forced on a population? Will a stronger church and sympathetic monarchy bring all this back? Or will it become defaced by power? Michelangelo argued with his church employers over the necessity of beauty rather than their narrow beliefs. I may wish I lived in the time of cathedrals, but how many men died carrying the stones? How many men die from working on the docks or the scaffolding or the roofs of the city? My talents are with the brush, not the chisel. The altars would be painted by M. Ingres or M. Delacroix or M. Géricault. They would paint martyrs to God rather than martyrs to man. And what would I do? Carry the stone? Work in the glass mill? Die on the scaffolding and never come near a brush? Is this what Monsieur would bring back? The town dying and subordinate, forgetting that it had been the town rampant in the days of the Revolution? Forgetting that the town had sent men out across Europe, had restored Warsaw to Poland, had marched out to defended freedom?

He knelt and prayed. Lord, I know you are here. Forgive me, but I do not feel you in the church I go to. You reside here, in this decayed, collapsing vault, in the memory of what men once did for you. I feel you here. The Revolution tried to destroy you here because here you are powerful. Here you live. Please tell me why I feel you only when the priests sing in Latin, not when they speak in French. Please tell me why I need you, when everyone around me is without faith. I do not seek salvation or forgiveness, for I know my sins as well as you do. But please, if it so pleases you, tell me what I must do, for my soul cries out for more than I deserve, and I must disobey my soul or disobey society. The priests would tell me, as Sophie tells me, that I mustn't look above my station. But did you or Satan put these desires in me? You created me. You must have given me this great capacity for learning, for understanding, these great talents that belong ordinarily to the bourgeois, to M. Delacroix and M. Ingres and M. Géricault. You gave me so many ways to serve you that have been denied to everyone else of my class. Please tell me how I must serve you, through obedience or through thought? Because they no longer seem to reconcile, not with Monsieur on the throne. Forgive me if I have gone in the wrong direction, tempted by Satan instead, but if you sent your son with a message of peace, to cure the blind and crippled and bring them back into society, if the Greek war is a true crusade for the deliverance of a people, then duty and obedience are to you and these ideas, not to the priests and the king, but to the people. All the peoples.

Protect our late king, he added, a bit lamely but it only seemed right in the middle of a funeral mass. I think he tried his best for the rights of all. Amen.

Outside, the clouds had grown thicker, but there was still no rain. The river breeze had kicked up, and Feuilly walked east along the quays, his hat in his hand so the breeze might whip through his hair. The dockers and water taxis were still at work, though the swimming school was deserted. He felt disgustingly idle for walking about in the middle of a work day, but the river breeze was a breath of God.


	23. Chapter 23

The mourning fans had sold well enough that another week was spent on them, a week of low wages. Feuilly was dissatisfied – he went to the café, though he could not really afford it, but was told that it was perhaps safest if he stayed away a bit longer. Neither fiction or philosophy held his interest in the dull evenings. He went to bed early all week, and often woke from vivid dreams, once with the shameful memory of Sophie having been a character in an otherwise forgotten drama.

Feuilly realised then that he was pining after Sophie, ridiculous as the notion was. Staying away from the café had led to the natural extension of staying away from the flat. But it was only after she was the unplanned image to his masturbation that he determined to stop defiling her in his thoughts.

"If a guy wanted some extra service," he asked his laundress, "how much might that cost?" She was a red, pockmarked, blowsy woman, easily old enough to be his mother, and not terribly likely to drive the image of Sophie from his mind, but it had seemed like an idea when he went to pick up his washing.

She did not quite laugh in his face, but the effect was much the same. "A boy like you ought to find what he wants on his own – and without fee!"

But that was precisely what he did not want – to go looking for a girl, to make overtures, to play at love and take the time when he was only craving a quick fuck to get certain images of one particular girl out of his head.

That night, either the rejection he had suffered or the obvious comparison between the two women drove Sophie even more vividly into his mind, to the point he contemplated asking the local priest about mortification of the flesh. His previous life had taught him little about resisting temptation, particularly when Lydie was easily the prettiest girl around and would come to his bed almost whenever he wanted. But to ask a priest for advice would simply to be told that celibacy outside of marriage is God's desire, which was rather ridiculous when God had not seemed to care how many mistresses King David had had.

Normal work was beginning to resume as no one was quite certain anymore the appropriate length of mourning for a monarch – the mourning fans did sell, but the shops wanted new supplies of normal merchandise for the autumn. There was still no word from the palace about the letter and designs Cartoux had sent, but then, Louis XVIII was not yet in the ground. It would perhaps be inappropriate for the immediate family to start making preparations for the coronation while in the heaviest mourning. The return of normal work did mean a return to normal pay so that there were options beyond the laundress and self-flagellation.

Thus he found himself dropping a franc into the palm of the local streetwalker and seeking redemption in her rosy cunt rather than in the religion he knew he ought rather to seek out. Her _diseased_ cunt, he learned two days later when he felt his prick on fire. The bitch had given him the _chaude pisse_, which made for an uncomfortable few days. Mme Pinon kept giving him sympathetic looks every time he winced, and even more embarrassing was Sophie's attention. If it had not been that he had to share paints, he would have gone to sit with the men. Release from the shop was no relief, as the only cure he knew came from a man in the Temple, and he looked forward neither to the long walk nor to whom he might meet in such a place.

His worst fears were quickly realised. Arriving at sunset, he had to look through the stalls for the irregular doctor he remembered. His searches drove him smack into Babet.

"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged back!"

Had he been in a better mood, Feuilly might have drawn his knife, but as it as, he only had the energy to tell Babet to go fuck himself.

"You look like shit."

"I feel like shit," he snapped back.

"Going straight never worked out for you."

"It wasn't going straight that did this. Where the hell's the clap doctor?"

Babet laughed and slapped him on the back. "Your first? Congratulations."

Feuilly rolled his eyes. "It's burning piss, not a child."

"I wouldn't offer congratulations for that." Babet led him to the clap doctor, a mountebank from the Ardenne who had traveled with Babet at one time, may or may not have been a failed apothecary, and may or may not have shared the lost wife.

For his thirty sous, Feuilly received an old whiskey bottle filled with a vile smelling liquid. "Drink half now, half tomorrow evening. If it still burns on the third day, come back."

"Buy you a drink?" Babet asked after the transaction was complete.

"I've got one," Feuilly replied, brandishing the bottle. Drink only turned to piss anyway, and despite what he was supposed to ingest, he rather hoped to endure those effects as little as possible though his bladder had very different ideas. Pushing into the crowd to escape Babet, he slipped into the nearest alley, which was not wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and strode past the streaming dwellings to the other entrance on the main road.

He paused to take a swig of his cure, which he promptly spit out again. It was more than just bitter – it coated his mouth and made it burn, an herbal burn that was not at all like the familiar tingle of alcohol. Like must cure like, he thought, but he returned to the bottle only after finding a coffee seller in the hope that like would also cover the taste of like. To his chagrin, street coffee was too weak to do anything against the taste of the cure. Some bread helped, though an hour later, he found himself leaning against a wall, pissing into the gutter with a stream like a horse, enduring his worst pain yet, easily proportional to the volume of cure ingested.

Feuilly left the bottle at home the next day, half convinced the quack's medicine was no better than Babet's tooth pulling. Another day enduring everyone's looks was nearly as wearying as the continued effects of the clap. He started to suspect that at least the men had figured out what ailed him, including Cartoux, which was patently embarrassing.

That night, the bottle seemed to stare at him accusingly. He knew very well that it was punishment rather than cure. His sinful thoughts about one woman had led to his exploitation of another, and both the illness and the medicine were the fleshly mortification he had denied as an answer. In this spirit, he drank down the rest of the vile mixture and threw the bottle out of the window, where it could not taunt him. The usual result happened within the hour, and through the torment, Feuilly imagined the sin draining out of him. Of course such a cure would burn – was not the devil made of fire? But then he thought he was being ridiculously superstitious, particularly as God had given him the ability to analyse and understand the world in a way that need not rely on peasant fears, and he went to bed, apologising for both the act and the opinion of the cure to which he had been guided. But he still did not sleep well, and his prick still burned. The mortification of the flesh, he reminded himself on the morning walk to the workshop.

And, indeed, the cure was cure – the burning lessened through the day, so that Feuilly decided not to waste another thirty sous on another bottle. In the morning, the pain was gone.

He was drawn back to the Poles before the week was out, and this time they received him with open arms. The student was back as well, with a new waistcoat more hideous than any of the last, and Feuilly was surprised to find himself hailed by so august a personage.

"You're the only man here I can understand half the time," the student told him. "I should introduce myself properly – Bahorel."

Feuilly gave his name warily. The student was too flash and too obvious to be a police spy, yet precisely because no one would take him for a police spy, he would be effective as a spy, would he not? But would the police recruit a slumming student? And if he was only a slumming student, why was he so interested in speaking to a common workman?

"What dragged you into this den?"

"I work with M. Albert's daughter," Feuilly told him firmly, insisting on his inferiority.

"And were you politically minded already or is she the beauty of the world?" When Feuilly said nothing and merely took a sip of his drink, Bahorel laughed. "What is she like? Blonde?"

"Of course."

"Small waist, fine ankles, nice tits?"

"She is chaste like a Madonna," he said reprovingly.

"Good luck to you, citizen."

"I don't need luck. Her position and mine are hardly the same," Feuilly insisted. "Nothing can be permitted to happen between me and a lady of noble birth."

"Let me tell you something about the Poles. One man in ten calls himself a nobleman. There are more nobles than there are townsmen. They don't have titles, they don't have land, and I'll bet you 100 francs that M. Albert had no property to be confiscated when when he and his master followed Bonaparte out. If his daughter has any education, she got it through service to her master's daughter. He's a retired servant, in all likelihood, nothing more. Especially if his daughter works for a living."

"How do you know so much?"

"I know Massalski." It was well known that Wojciech Chrzyszczewski worked for Prince Adam Massalski.

"Isn't Prince Massalski a more suitable companion for someone of your stature?"

"I'm no more noble than you are, though I suppose I take your point. But come, you're slumming, too. I've heard you quote Montesquieu with more felicity than I could muster."

"That is no proof of your theory. You've seen the book stalls."

"Half of Paris is illiterate and the rest can't understand Montesquieu, much less quote him. Hell, at my school, we weren't even permitted to read him."

"The autodidact does exist."

"And see there? You speak too well."

"I have an attachment to books, that's all."

"Whatever you say."

"You are the only one slumming, monsieur, if you are indeed acquainted with Prince Massalski."

"I prefer the lower ranks. There's more chance for action."

"Do you plan to march on Warszawa with them?" Feuilly asked sarcastically, unconsciously using the Polish pronunciation of the city.

"I rather have hopes Monsieur will keep me busy."

"At hard labour? He is now the king and must be treated with respect."

"Our friendly neighbourhood informer isn't here today. You can call Monsieur anything you like."

Feuilly looked around, and indeed, all the faces were familiar, and the usual informer was missing. "I have no opinions on the king. He hasn't done anything yet to have an opinion on. Did you see his entry into the city after the funeral?"

"Yes. A disgusting display of toadying from people who should know better. Nothing is more glorious than a Parisian mob in anger. Parisians on the march brought the Poles back here."

Feuilly agreed whole-heartedly, but he preferred to be more discreet than the student. "He looked people in the eye and made a fine figure on a horse, so I heard. It's more than we've had since the Hundred Days. Besides, the last good riot was over Lallemand, and that was ages ago."

"I know – I was in it. Glorious, wasn't it?"

Feuilly couldn't help grinning – perhaps the bourgeois was little different to the gamin at bottom. Or certain elements of the bourgeoisie, anyway. "It was brilliant. Last decent romp I had. But is Charles really going to give us a chance for fun? He'll moderate his acts solely to deprive us of the entertainment."

Bahorel laughed. He was a big man, the sort who might have been a boxer had he been a mason rather than a student, and his laughter resonated through the café. "The man does have a mistress, but you're right that he has a low opinion of other entertainments. Down with boredom!" he cried gaily.

Feuilly just shook his head, though he smiled. The slumming bourgeois could say such things, but the workman who decries boredom verges on the criminal. He knew this because Babet, Brujon, and Claquesous had railed against the tyranny of boredom, of an honest life spent doing the same thing day in and day out. Even Guelemer, who was little better than an idiot, conflated honesty with boredom. "You have your battles," he told the student. "Let us make ours when we must, for our benefit, not just for our mutual entertainment."

"So you'd welcome a battle for your benefit."

"We are here for the benefit of Poland."

"And you support Greece."

"Of course. What Christian does not?"

"But only because they are Christian?"

"Tyranny is tyranny, whether the tyrant be Musulman or Orthodox or even Catholic, as the Austrians in Venice."

"Or French?"

"We do not know yet if he is a tyrant."

"What of Louis XVI?"

"The riot to end all riots. Perhaps we should overthrow a tyrant every generation – I'm rather sore at missing that fun. I could do without taking over Spain, though."

"Tyranny is tyranny."

"And was for the Spanish to decide," Feuilly agreed. "It isn't well-intentioned fraternal assistance to make your brother king. Even if Brutus had not been Roman, he would have had the right to join the conspiracy. A tyranny diminishes the world. But if Brutus had been the only Roman in the conspiracy, he would have had no right to act in concert with that foreign group. To act alone would have been to act on his beliefs as a Roman; to act with foreigners would have been to act on their beliefs, and while the action may have been beneficial, it could never have been right."

"And you say you don't have an education."

"I couldn't name the rest of the conspirators even if the Inquisition asked me."

"That's not what I mean."

"There are surely imbeciles of all ranks."

"Indeed, the last king of England died mad. My point is that one does not expect to find intelligent men in all ranks. I'd rather you had a vote than any of the electors in my department, including my father."

"And what good would that do?"

"Again with the wisdom! You can't even be as old as I!"

"One has to grow up quickly here. One also grows old quickly and dies quickly."

"So the statistical reports say. Of course, the same reports say you are all one step from criminality."

"Less than one step. Are we not engaged in plotting against a foreign sovereign?" He knew perfectly well that he would never fully step out of the dangerous classes, but he hoped to deflect the idea from strangers.

"Too true," Bahorel agreed, much to Feuilly's relief.

"You are keeping my genius from me, monsieur!" M. Albert entered the conversation with a good-natured chastisement.

"A genius he is indeed. That's why we've been talking for so long."

"He is learning our language."

Feuilly reddened. "A few words only. It is not so worthy of announcement to the gentleman, Pan."

"So few people care to learn. Did you know, monsieur, that M. Feuilly paints as well as he talks philosophy?"

"Considering how I make my living, I should hope I paint better than I talk philosophy. But in both cases, I am untaught. I copy others; I have no style of my own."

"M. Feuilly is modest."

"And Pan Wojciech is acting more like a father than like an acquaintance."

"A man would be pleased to have such a son."

"I am told you have been blessed with a daughter," Bahorel said.

"Yes, monsieur. The curse of my life. One should support a daughter, help her to marry well. A daughter should not have to labour for her keep. A man is made to work, to earn his place. But a girl? Who will she ever marry without a dowry?"

"You are condemned to accept a love match, I'm afraid."

"A girl of noble blood in a love match," M. Albert sighed. "Perhaps we may return before such a disaster would come to pass."

"I take it back," Bahorel said to Feuilly after M. Albert went to the bar. "He may be a servant, but with his head that far in the clouds, you haven't got a chance with the daughter. You might as well be her brother."

"I'm the family lackey, as Pan Wojciech is to Pan Massalski. He only permits me to call him Pan Wojciech until I can manage to wrap my tongue around his impossible surname, in any case. He teaches me his language so I can interact with his household on the level of a servant. I learn it because he's willing to teach it."

"You're too much in love with the daughter for your own good. If you keep hanging around here, it won't be your head that gets broken."

"Thank you for your concern, monsieur, but I know my place in this household and in this company." It was his place in the rest of society he doubted.

Feuilly did not tell Sophie that he had held a friendly conversation with a bourgeois student. She would only scold him for forgetting his station. And the student was slumming – he sought to engage in inappropriate conversation. It was not at all like the medical student at the Salon. But Feuilly was now more confident that he could avoid embarrassing himself should he run into the medical student and his friends. Nevertheless, he still lacked the courage to go to that café, or even return to the Salon. He could hold a conversation, just as he could pick a lock – being able to do something was very different from knowing it right to do that thing.

"Feuilly!"

It was a surprise to find Laforêt, of all people, shouting after him in the street after the workers had been dismissed for the day, following awkwardly and giving up the chase with a shout. Feuilly stopped and let him catch up, asking in confusion, "What is it?"

"Could you spare a moment? This is rather awkward."

"Go on." It was already the most words they had exchanged in the nine months they had worked for Cartoux. Neither of the inlayers were much older than he, but they had been there longer, worked at different tasks, and had always treated him with indifference. No one had ever faulted him for working with the women, but neither had they sought friendship. Cartoux did not permit fraternisation, after all, except in the surprising circumstances of the king's death.

"Did I – well – it's an awful thing to ask – did I see you with Fanny Rosier last week?"

Feuilly reddened at having been caught with the local whore. "Christ."

"It was the hair. Anyway," Laforêt continued, "did she – did you – I mean, I didn't put two and two together. Did she give you the clap, too?" he finally finished in a rush.

"Damned _roulure_," Feuilly muttered.

"What did you do for it? Because fuck, it burns like anything." His face contorted into a grimace.

"There's a man in the Temple," Feuilly told him, "though the cure he'll sell you is as bad as the disease."

"Does the clap really make your prick fall off?"

"So perhaps the cure isn't any worse," Feuilly corrected, though he had to admit to himself he hadn't heard that one before, possibly because Babet had been through who knew how many courses and his parts were all intact.

"Do you mind showing me where the stall is?"

As much as Feuilly hated the idea of running into Babet again, the look of desperation on Laforêt's pinched face was too much to bear. He helped the poor man to the Temple.

"You're back. You didn't drink the whole thing, did you?" the mountebank asked, sounding more like a fishwife than a businessman.

"Worked a charm," Feuilly replied defensively. "My friend here is the one in need of your services today."

The cure in hand, he did not tell Laforêt the effects – had he been told before he took the first dose, he would have been tempted to let the disease pass. But he did walk Laforêt home and wish him luck. It took a certain kind of courage to ask a near stranger for venereal cures.

Not that Laforêt remained a stranger. The cure worked in the promised two days for him, and in those two days, he spoke more to Feuilly than he ever had before. Feuilly was uncertain what to think – he had become accustomed to the Poles, was cultivating an acquaintance with students, and found Laforêt to be a very common sort of acquaintance indeed. While he knew he ought to simply accept Laforêt's friendship, particularly as it was the appropriate sort of friendship instead of the class-jumping nonsense he was otherwise engaged in, he did it out of courtesy rather than interest. Aleçon had the veneer of cleverness, at the very least, while Laforêt was amiable enough, the friend you took to the theatre when you fancied a dancer because he would agree with you on her beauty but not compete for her attentions, but hardly the friend you would take when you wanted to later discuss the plot.

Still, it was appropriate, and in some ways a pleasant change, to have male company that thought more of girls than politics, pleasure than gain. To sit in the gods and not worry that his leg might touch Sophie's leg, to go to an ever grittier tavern and play dominoes rather than talk politics, were entertainments Feuilly had avoided since coming to the workshop, and though he was not whole-heartedly enamoured of Laforêt's company, he did admit he had missed the normal life he had known before and thought applied only to the criminally idle. It took only a brief time for life to settle into something better, though still rather against Cartoux's rules, than it had been before.

Until the police came.


	24. Chapter 24

It was the middle of October, a rainy Friday in which every lamp had stayed lit all day. An inspector came striding in, brandishing his identity card in glass, followed by seven or eight officers. "Papers out!" he snapped. "Which one of you is Cartoux?"

"I am." Cartoux showed a remarkable self possession. "How can I help you, monsieur?" Feuilly was shaking, and only with trouble could he produce his forged _livret_ from his pocket. Were they here for the papers or had they finally identified the dead man and now came for the murderer? Could they, after so long? He finally dared look at Sophie, who was white as a sheet, staring at the passport she had placed on the table.

"You're shut down as of this moment. License revoked on order of His Majesty. And you're all under arrest."

"Even the women?"

"Even the women."

"Am I permitted to ask for what crime?"

The inspector paused, as if thinking it over, but finally did answer. "Treason."

Sophie grasped Feuilly's hand, hers cold and clammy with fear. But Feuilly relaxed a bit. He took no pleasure in the arrest, but treason was unlikely to translate to murder. M. Albert would be pulled in as well, certainly – it must be about the Poles, with Cartoux in the unfortunate position of having employed conspirators, but M. Albert's employer was almost certainly in the same position. But acts against a foreign power were not so likely to land him headless in the place de Grève. Unless they followed the forged _livret_, and someone squawked, and then, instead of rescuing Sophie after doing his stretch – why keep him locked up forever for drinking with conspirators against a foreign government? – he would end up losing his head anyway. The only thing to do was to go along as calmly as possible and give them no reason to care to follow where the _livret_ had come from. It was the best forgery he could afford, after all, from a master craftsman, hardly a cheap fake. Unless it all came back to the murdered man, and the rest was merely theatre to put him at his ease.

The workmen and Cartoux were taken away in one closed carriage while the women were taken in another. At the nearest station, Cartoux was taken directly to an interrogation room while his three employees were locked in a holding cell. Feuilly had never had the bad luck to be on this side of the bars, though he had frequently been sent to deliver messages in the guise of a man's son, but neither of the others had been so unlucky, either. He sat down on the floor and composed himself as best he could. Whatever happened, his only choice was to act with honour, to behave in a manner that would make Babet proud, as that was the world he had so brusquely re-entered.

That determination did not last long, however. Nearly as soon as he managed to slouch while clamping his leg muscles to give the impression that he was lounging without trembling in fear, Aleçon, who had not stopped shaking from the moment the police entered the workshop, walked across the cell with a strange calmness and started beating his head against the wall. Feuilly looked at Laforêt, who was staring appalled, and then did his best to pull the man away from the wall. Laforêt joined him once the need broke through the shock, and between the two of them, they managed to get Aleçon seated in the centre of the cell, propped between them, away from possible objects of suicide. With firm hands binding him, Aleçon stayed silent, his head drooping sadly to his breast.

"What the hell?" Laforêt whispered.

"Some men can't take being locked up." But Feuilly was uncertain if it was merely latent madness or if it was guilt. He hoped it was guilt – if Aleçon could be questioned before he smeared his brains all over the cell, it would mean that everyone could get out of here with some measure of pride still intact. "Have you got a handkerchief?" His had been wrapped around the knife the police had confiscated at their arrest.

In silence, Laforêt passed his handkerchief to Feuilly so Feuilly could wipe the blood from Aleçon's face. It was a welcome distraction, something to concentrate on other than the possibility that Cartoux himself had done something that would condemn them all. Laforêt put all his force into keeping Aleçon in place, but Feuilly could see the worry on his face and the trembling in his limbs. The only men who take to being locked up are the ones who have been there before, he thought. But he realised that he was no longer shaking, no longer trying to hide his fear because his fear was gone. The only question now was what the police wanted and how much of a rat he ought to be when Aleçon's sudden madness came up, as it must now that he had a definite scrape on his forehead. Laforêt kept looking to him every time Aleçon moved, and despite his qualms, Feuilly knew he had no choice but to accept that, for the time being, his education had fitted him to be the leader in this awful situation.

It was hard to tell how long they had been there, but an officer came for Laforêt. Cartoux was not brought to the holding cell – was this because he was guilty, innocent, or of a higher class than the workers, Feuilly wondered. It would be ridiculous to take him directly to the Conciergerie when there were three possible other arrests to be housed until trial. Or did he merit greater consideration as an employer?

With Laforêt gone, Feuilly was alone with Aleçon, who suddenly became voluble. Was Laforêt the weak link, the rat who would finish him off, while Feuilly was trusted to keep his mouth shut? But soon it became obvious that Aleçon's ranting was more about his wife than about the king. Feuilly had not known there was a Mme Aleçon, though he reminded himself that he should not be surprised. While all the men in Cartoux's employ were young, Aleçon appeared the eldest and it was only natural he should have made an alliance with a woman. As time passed, it became obvious that Mme Aleçon did not hold that title legally and had lately decided to take protection from another man, possibly thus landing everyone in hospital. Or so Aleçon's rantings seemed to imply, that it was entirely her fault that he was sick, sitting in a cell, being kept from suicide by a man he barely knew.

But when an officer returned, he clammed up. Feuilly was no longer certain if it were madness or a feint of madness, since it took presence of mind not to incriminate oneself in the presence of the police, but there was no reason a man in his right mind would trust anyone in this situation, certainly not after trying to end the entire mess through suicide rather than confession.

"Come on."

Aleçon looked to Feuilly for reprieve, seeming somehow both mad in his expression and utterly sane in intent, if it was his intent to seek assistance from his remaining companion. Feuilly had no desire to act the rat, but an honest man would push the crazy bastard to the cops and have done with it, so that is what Feuilly tried his best to do, feeling utterly guilty all the while. He barely knew Aleçon, the man had almost certainly gotten him arrested, and yet they were companions and thus partners. Feuilly had been taught the old ways, of loyalty in a fix rather than the crass opportunism that Vidocq and his _mouchards_ exploited to such success. It was not in his training or his nature to throw anyone to the cops with a light heart.

He was now alone in the cell, which gave him the opportunity to examine it more closely. Stone flags on the floor, stone walls, heavy wooden door with a barred opening. A bucket in the corner in case of need was the only furniture the cell contained. This was merely the first step, however. He knew that eventually, he would be taken to the prefecture depot so the nighttime drunks and whores picked up after the cafés closed would not have to dry out in the presence of a traitor. Then, he would end up at Bicêtre to await trial, after which he would return to await the departure of the next chain, or he would go to the Conciergerie to await the preparations in the place de Grève. His future was suddenly known, planned out step by step, for the first time in his life. The only way to change that future was escape, but he had never been taught how to dig. Better to die bravely in a few months than botch an escape like an incompetent coward. There would be no honour in incompetence.

He heard the officer's footsteps before the man appeared at the door. "Your turn to sing." Feuilly took a deep breath and followed him, calm as Babet would have liked. What is to happen is to happen, and only then will we see if it ends in the chain or the blade, he thought.

He was led upstairs to a long, narrow room with a window at the far end, containing a writing desk and a long table down the centre. He was told to sit at that long table, kept by its length from seeing just what the writing desk might contain. A couple of candles, not lamps, attempted to do something against the autumn gloom.

The inspector was looking at his_ livret_. "Daniel Feuilly."

"Yes, monsieur."

"How long have you worked for Cartoux?"

The truth, he reminded himself. An honest man tells the truth. He does not know how to lie to the police. "Since January."

"Since January," the inspector repeated thoughtfully. "And what is it you do for him?"

"I'm a colourist. And if the Palace contract goes through, I may become an illuminator."

"What the hell does that mean?" the inspector asked contemptuously.

"I paint the fans," Feuilly explained. "That's all."

"Ever work with a knife?"

"No, monsieur."

"We took one off you."

"Would you walk around St Antoine unarmed?" He immediately regretted the sarcasm – it would not help his cause.

"A friend of yours got you the job, I suppose."

"No, monsieur. I answered an advertisement in the _Gazette de France_."

He received a slap across the face for his polite honesty. "Liar. The _Gazette de France_, indeed. How long have you known Gustave Aleçon?"

Feuilly wanted to rub his sore cheek but was careful to keep his hands folded and let only a small wince show the sting. "I met him when I started work. I've barely spoken to the man. I work with the women."

"But you work with him now."

"I work with the women," Feuilly repeated. "We are all in the same room, yes. But Aleçon and Laforêt are inlayers. They do the carving at the other end of a rather long room, as you've seen. We've barely spoken in nine months. I work with the women. M. Cartoux will tell you. Aleçon himself will tell you if he recovers his wits."

"Can you read and write?"

"Yes, monsieur!" Feuilly was unconsciously defensive, which seemed to please the inspector, who brought paper and a writing stand from the desk at the other end of the room.

"Written statement. Take it down. 'I, Daniel Feuilly, do swear that I seek to send Charles X, the rightful and glorious King of France, back to exile or hell.'"

"But I don't, monsieur," Feuilly dared to say. To write it would certainly be to lose his head for treason, and he would much prefer to lose his head for the murder he did commit than for an act he had never contemplated until arrested for it.

His denial earned him another slap. "Take it down," the inspector ordered. He repeated the sentence. Feuilly complied, thinking it easier than continued resistance, but he inserted a negative so that the paper in its current form would not become evidence against him. The inspector took the paper to the desk at the other end of the room and compared it to something Feuilly could not see. It was evidently not to his liking because he crumpled the paper in his hand and threw it to the floor in disgust.

"You paint the fans," he started up again.

"Yes, monsieur."

"What is this Palace contract that would get you a promotion? It is a promotion, isn't it?"

"M. Cartoux asked me to come up with a design for a fan that would celebrate the coronation. He submitted a mock-up to the Palace and is hoping to get a contract that would provide fans of that design to all the women attending the coronation. If he doesn't get a reply, he may just start making them on spec and selling them to the shops that he usually supplies around town."

"You did the design."

"Yes, monsieur."

"The whole thing?"

"The front and back leaves, yes."

"What about the wooden part?"

"I don't know what monture M. Cartoux used. I just worked on the leaves."

"In plain language?"

"I drew the design on the silk with pen and ink and used watercolours to fill it in. The wooden parts are made elsewhere – we get them in by the box – and we just decorate them. Because no one is making montures with plain sticks – the silk is glued to the sticks – M. Cartoux selected the style he wanted and asked Aleçon to cut it down so the silk would glue flat. After I gave M. Cartoux the leaves – the silk parts – I never saw what happened."

"But you made the design."

"Yes, monsieur."

"I know you hang about the Polish exiles," he accused Feuilly in an about-face that left Feuilly very confused. What did the Poles have to do with fans or the workshop? Aleçon did not hang about the Poles.

"Yes, monsieur." To justify himself as an innocent man, he added, "The pretty girl I work with is Polish. Her father's good opinion of me is of great importance." He did not mention that Sophie had been involved in the design assignment as well. It was perhaps too late, the inspector may have already spoken to the women, but Feuilly knew he had to protect her in any way he could.

"You haven't been called in over a love affair," the inspector snapped. He repeated warningly, "I know you hang about the Poles. Also, your papers are not in order."

Feuilly gripped the chair and willed himself not to shake. Or would an innocent man shake? Perhaps he was too cool to be an innocent man. No, the only thing to do when sick is to make Babet proud. "Monsieur?" he asked as calmly as he could manage.

"You say you've worked for Cartoux since January. Why has he not signed your _livret_?"

Because I did not acquire the papers until spring, Feuilly wanted to snap, just to have the whole thing done with. "He never asked for my papers," he replied instead, a much more mild statement that was also true.

"By law, your papers must be presented to all employers." Feuilly said nothing, just looked at the table rather than risk meeting the inspector's gaze. "Very well. You'll spend the night while we look into this."

"Monsieur?"

"I have not completed my investigation."

It was raining harder, and gloom had processed to darkness, when he and Laforêt were bound, put into a closed carriage, and taken to the prefecture depot, where they were unceremoniously pushed into a cell with several other men – but not Aleçon or Cartoux – to await the outcome of that investigation.


	25. Chapter 25

Feuilly and Laforêt sat together in the holding cell, keeping apart from the criminals as best they could.

It was not a serious investigation, Feuilly thought. They had plenty of time to compare and coordinate stories if necessary, though coordination proved unnecessary as Laforêt was asked the same sort of questions, including being asked to provide the same written statement. He had supplied one out of fear, which made Feuilly want to smack some sense into him, but he refrained. Not everyone had been taught how to handle an arrest and interrogation.

Unfortunately, he had also been taught that one could be locked up for months without any charges brought, and it was impossible to tell what the inspector had meant when he had said "I have not completed my investigation." They sat in the corner they had managed to mark out for themselves, thanks to some posturing on Feuilly's part, and waited.

A few additional prisoners were added throughout the evening, including a familiar black man. A familiar face was both good and bad. The necessity was appalling, but with no sense how long a treason investigation might take, something had to be done. The moment he made eye contact, Feuilly decided it would be much easier if he were to make the approach rather than risk Laforêt overhearing the conversation. He had to make contact with someone if there were any chance of word getting to Babet sooner rather than later that he was sick. There was no point sitting for weeks without funds when there was an alternative. And beyond funds, there was always the possibility of information.

"Lord, kid, they said you'd gone straight! Congratulations on your first arrest – what'd you get jacked for?" Homer Hogu asked, a distinctly unwelcome question.

"Picking the king's pocket," Feuilly answered as flippantly as he could. "His crown was hanging out, and someone tried to nip it."

"What?"

"Some mix up," Feuilly insisted, hoping it would become true if he thought it. "A treason investigation. I have gone straight – they pulled in everyone from the workshop, including the women."

"Treason? Never thought you'd get picked up for anything political. Still, you're here. Took long enough."

"Long enough? I was hoping for never."

"That was a neat piece of work last year, I must say. It'd be a shame if they found out about that. Quick and clean and never identified."

A chill spread through Feuilly's limbs. "Is that a threat? Because I don't know what you're talking about." Of course, a familiar face was not only a potential line of contact with the outside world; it was also the perfect pigeon if there was no treason case at all and everything was a charade to force him into accidentally confessing to the murder.

"Relax." Hogu patted him on the back. "Genuine admiration. Our mutual friends were real proud. But say no more – I've got your back."

"It doesn't sound like it."

"It is a shame, though, being pulled in over something ridiculous."

"The truth would leave me without a head, and I'd really rather keep mine. What are you in for? The _pègre_?" Feuilly had unconsciously slipped back into the ordinary slang for "robbery", just as he had, from the moment Hogu appeared, slipped back into his ordinary postures and cocky mode of speech even in the midst of his fear that Hogu had turned informer.

"This dog doesn't bother with new tricks. Brujon got jacked, too – he's already at La Force."

"Fuck. I didn't need to know that. Fuck. It was the damned carpets, wasn't it?"

"Furniture of some sort. I got my ass out of there, not much good it did me."

"Damn. Knew it'd happen sooner or later."

"Anybody know you're here?"

"The cops and the Lord. Got picked up this afternoon – everyone at the workshop, even the women."

"We could use you out on the streets."

Feuilly sighed. It was just the comment he needed. Someone would know Hogu had been arrested and would make contact with him. Hogu would pass on that he had seen Feuilly. Contact would be made and assistance would be available. Life would again be possible. It was tempting to keep to Hogu's side, let him be the big man and provide protection. Babet would not look down on him for apprenticing to someone who knew how to get well. But there were greater dangers in knowing Hogu. "Look, the more you and I talk, the more guilty of something I look just by knowing you. Thank you." He meant to stay cool, but relief and gratitude took over. "Christ, thank you. Best of luck – good health to you – God willing, we'll see each other on the outside."

"Who was that?" Laforêt asked when Feuilly returned to their corner.

"A guy from my old neighbourhood. I always thought he was up to no good," Feuilly lied. "I told him this was hardly the place to trade reminiscences."

But Hogu's presence, even at distance, was of comfort, and not just because Hogu was able to make contact with the outside. For his honour, Feuilly had to bear his confinement with the expected fortitude. He had chosen to be the big man himself and not join Hogu, so he would have to keep it up or risk Babet hearing about it. And there was luck on his side: no one else caught up in this mess would be so fortunate as to have a friendly face in the cell with him. He could even pretend that Hogu had been sent particularly to look after him – if the timing had been different, he would not entirely put the notion past Brujon, though Babet would not bother.

The prisoners were ignored through the night, though the lamps were never permitted to burn out. Feuilly dozed a bit, waking once to find Laforêt clinging to him, his head pillowed on Feuilly's shoulder, as a lover or a child. He saw no weakness in this act. Most men had not been raised by jailbirds, their education consisting in large part how to bear a stretch. Laforêt did not weep, as a man at the other end of the cell did; he merely clung to the only familiar person in sight, the only relic of a life that had ended the moment the inspector had walked in that afternoon. Feuilly felt distinctly sorry for him – the honest man was likely to be ruined. As for himself, he was beginning to wonder if there was any point in getting another forged _livret_ now that his had a police file to match it or if he might as well just seek out Babet when he was finally sprung. Two men down, he'd need the extra hand, and honest work did not seem to be working out too well.

In the morning, they were each given a piece of bread, and several men were taken out at once. "Hey!" Feuilly called after the guard. "You ain't posted the prices! What's it cost for a couple bowls of coffee in here?" He paid the required amount – approximately four times what it would cost from the coffee seller at the door that had to be the supplier – and handed one of the bowls of tepid coffee to Laforêt. "Drink up. It's the best I can afford to do right now."

"How did you know it was even possible?"

"Everything's for sale in Paris and always has been. Why do you think they let you keep your money? Hell, you can even buy privileges in solitary at La Force." Laforêt gave him a look that Feuilly could only interpret as suspicion, but he drank the coffee and even thanked him for it.

They were kept all day with no sign of the inspector. Men were taken out and more took their places as the day progressed. Hogu was taken and gave Feuilly a salute as he went. His going did not distress Feuilly as much as he might have expected the previous night, however. Hogu would be going either to court or to the Conciergerie or even back out onto the streets, and any of those places would be ideal for getting the word to Babet that he had been picked up. The longer he sat behind bars, the more he knew he was going to need Babet.

He and Laforêt spoke little. Feuilly mostly stared at the walls, imagining a life circumscribed by iron and stone, while Laforêt kept his eyes on the floor. Only once in the course of the interminable day did Laforêt break the silence. "You know, when you showed up and Cartoux hired you, Aleçon thought you were a fancy boy. It wasn't that you were set to the women – he needed a colourist, that's all there was to it on that score – but that you looked more like the women than like us. I wasn't friends with him, really, but after a year on the same bench, and him not as able as some to keep his mouth shut, that's the sort of thing he shared with me. I didn't know if I believed him. But maybe that's how you know how things work in these places."

"I've never been a fancy boy," Feuilly snapped. "I don't go showing my bum in the Tuileries. You caught me with Fanny, for Christ's sake."

"Let me finish. I don't know what you did before you came to Cartoux. I don't care how you know anything. I really just wanted to say I'm damned grateful. If you weren't here, I might take my head to the wall like Aleçon."

"Don't be an idiot." But Feuilly was rather grateful for Laforêt's presence, too – he might have clung to Hogu otherwise, and that could only have led to greater suspicion.

They were not released that day, or taken to court. They merely sat, looking at the floors and walls and the other prisoners. In the evening, they pooled their money and settled on buying one extra dinner. Prison rations were barely sufficient even for sitting around bored.

Eventually, they started to chat just to kill time. They could talk to each other, or they could talk to the thieves and lechers, which provided little choice. Theatre, actresses, Feuilly shared a few of his daring exploits at the zoo when he was a child. Laforêt had grown up in the country and had very different stories. But they did not really speak of themselves – it was storytelling, not the sharing of confidences.

After three days of sheer boredom, Feuilly was pulled out and taken to a small interrogation room where the inspector was waiting.

"Interesting books you've got."

"Monsieur?" They had searched his room. Of course they had searched his room. Christ, he still had the bag. Had they found the bag? Would they believe the truth, that the bloodstains were his own?

"Not the sort of thing one expects from someone who reads the _Gazette de France_."

What did he have? He had traded in Rousseau and Voltaire long ago, which was the only good luck he had yet had in this mess, but what did he have in their place? His mind was racing. There was the Racine, the _Republic_, he still had the geometry book, his art book – what was he forgetting? What did he own at the moment that was less than White?

"I'm sorry, monsieur, but I don't know what you mean. I only have whatever could be gotten cheap."

The inspector dropped a book on the table in front of him. "It's not the book that interests me."

Feuilly cursed silently. It wasn't the book at all that was the trouble – the book was merely a random novel that he had not yet traded for a better. But it was where he had stuck the pamphlet he was proofing for Pan Chrzyszczewski. Which was really very White because it agitated for the return of the traditional Polish monarchy – Pan Chrzyszczewski was not one of the young liberals who thought they could resurrect the Polish nation through an expanded franchise and abolition of the liberum veto.

"Men who read the _Gazette de France_ do not often care about what goes on outside of Paris."

"It has covered the war in Greece," Feuilly said as mildly as he could.

"Greece is not Poland."

Feuilly swallowed hard and decided to exaggerate a bit. "My girl's father asked me to take a look at it. Correct his French. He gave it to me at mass." That much was true, though Sophie was hardly his girl. "It's all about restoring the monarchy."

"Through election."

"That's the way it was done in Poland, and only noblemen are allowed to vote. Not a word of it says such a system ought to be instituted in France. The idea is ridiculous. Why should France work on the same system as Poland? The peoples are entirely different. The French system went through a very bad patch, as the Polish system is going through now. In the end, it is to be hoped that they will have a restoration of tradition, just as we have had. Tradition is for the best. Have we not proved that?"

"But you support the war in Greece."

Feuilly was confused. He thought he was toeing the line, but it seemed to have shifted. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Haven't the Greeks traditionally been under Ottoman control?"

"They had ancient kings of their own."

"And demagogues."

"Athens wasn't all of Greece. Sparta had kings. Everyone's a king in the _Iliad_."

"You read a lot?"

"I suppose so, monsieur. I read what I can get my hands on."

"Not just newspapers and pamphlets."

"Whatever books I can find." Did he recognise the art book as stolen property? Is that what this line of interrogation about books was about?

"And you work for a living."

"Yes, monsieur."

"You see, boy, I don't think you are Daniel Feuilly, fanmaker, late of Aubusson. I think you've sold more books than you've bought. I think you've read more books than you currently own. I think you had a drawing master and were taught to declaim in Latin. And I think you and your Bonapartist family know Cartoux better than you've let on. If you would like to enlighten me on any of these points, please feel free."

Feuilly was profoundly confused and terribly scared. Did he somehow match a description of a runaway? "I'm sorry, monsieur, but I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not someone else. I've never been to school a day in my life. I never met M. Cartoux or heard his name until I saw his advertisement in the _Gazette de France_. I like to read, so I keep exchanging books. I'm sorry if I've done something wrong by doing that. I'm nobody. I swear." He was ready to name three different booksellers who could testify that they had dealt with him for years, but he held that card until he had to. One doesn't rat out innocent men as witnesses to the police unless the only other option is to lose one's head.

"There is no way that jibbering idiot did what he claims to have done without direction. I know it was the three of you. You've too much education to be anything but dangerous. I've got a letter out to the prefect of the Orne – then we'll see who is who."

But Feuilly had nothing to say. No one in the Orne knew who he was – the tiny village had been chosen because the forger was from the region and knew all the ins and outs of the village records. Aubusson's town hall had burned a few years ago, making it difficult to prove someone was not from the village if one did not care to make detailed inquiries. Unfortunately, inquiries related to a treason investigation were unlikely to fall to the bottom of the prefect's list. It would be known within a week – perhaps two if the rains continued bad – that he was not from Aubusson, and he was not entirely certain what he would do then. The only thing to do at the moment was to avoid lying outright and hope something would prove to the inspector that any attention paid him was a blind alley.

Since he would not answer, he was taken back to the holding cell. "Christ, you're white. What did he want?"

"To jerk me around, that's all," Feuilly answered weakly.

"He succeeded."

But Feuilly shook his head. "There wasn't anything to tell him. If he wants to think I'm slumming and my family are in cahoots with Cartoux and Aleçon, the truth isn't going to change his mind."

"Are they?"

"I haven't got any family. He thinks my name is fake and I must be some bourgeois Bonapartist's son because he happened to find a few books above my station when he searched my room."

"He searched your room?" Laforêt asked in a panicked tone.

"He probably searched all our rooms," Feuilly replied dismissively. "It wasn't the searching, it was the conclusions he drew. I can't tell him the truth if he thinks the truth is a lie."

Laforêt looked as though he wanted to ask more questions, but one of the guards interrupted them. "Feuilly. You got a brother?"

"Yes," he replied quickly, scrambling to his feet in relief. A brother almost certainly meant Montparnasse had been sent. Contact had been made; some reprieve was come at last.

The boy had grown considerably taller in the past year. Someone had dressed him up and forced him to comb his hair so that he looked vaguely respectable, which was more than Feuilly had ever done for anyone when he was Parnasse's age. But then, none of their associates had pretended to respectability.

They were permitted to embrace, during which Parnasse thrust a note into Feuilly's pocket. "What name are you using?" Feuilly whispered.

"Michel." They parted at a cough from the guard. "I can't believe you're in here!" Parnasse suddenly sobbed, rather too fake for Feuilly's taste.

"It's all a mistake, I'm sure." He bent down so they were face to face, not such a distance now as it once had been. "What's the word from his holiness?"

"I'm to give you these." A handful of coins – ten francs all told. "And you're not to worry."

"He's not to do anything, mind. It'll blow over, I'm sure."

Parnasse shrugged. "You in _collège_, what does anything else matter?"

"Don't be getting jealous that I'm skiving off work. I'm bored out of my mind and scared half to death."

"I gotta go."

Feuilly nodded, but he pulled the boy in for one last tight embrace, not so that messages could be passed but because he was not entirely certain when he would next see a friendly face, even if Parnasse looked more sullen than anything at the moment. "Thank you for coming. And tell him thank you. For everything."

Parnasse tipped him a salute as he left. "Your brother?" the guard asked.

"How much for a bottle of wine?" He counted out the necessary coins and beat it back to Laforêt. "We're in funds." He felt far more calm now that something was in train.

"I thought you said you didn't have family."

"I don't. I have friends. Contact has been made. With any luck, sometime in the next week or so we might start to hear actual information from someone other than the cops."

"The next week or so! How long do you think they'll keep us here?"

He thought for a moment. "Either until they can make enough of a case against me to put me on trial – they probably want you to rat me out – or until the coronation, whichever comes first."

"Bloody hell."

"It was Aleçon. He was ranting about it all being his wife's fault, and the inspector was originally trying to get me to say I'd known Aleçon for a long time. But with Aleçon going mad, or perhaps just acting mad, whatever he has done is not going to be as great of a political coup as if there were a conspiracy and we can all be put on trial. So, for the theatre of it, we have Cartoux directing Aleçon the crazed and me the slumming bourgeois Bonapartist. I think you're to be witness."

"Christ."

The guard returned with the requested bottle. "Thank you, monsieur. Have a drink yourself." Feuilly gave him a couple of sous. It would be helpful to have an ally among the guards. "Drink up," he told Laforêt. "Go on."

The note was brief. "Treason? What did you do? Hold on. We'll work something out." Babet's handwriting, so one could easily imagine where to insert the curses, and in plain language, which was a relief. Any plans for an escape would be couched in something more than "we'll work something out." The money was obviously a down payment for his services. If he ever did make it out, he knew the price of all this assistance would be to go straight back in. And he was willing to pay it if it meant keeping his head. The inspector was too fixated on him for there to be any happy ending.


	26. Chapter 26

The bruise on Laforêt's cheek had darkened, visible even beneath his ten-day growth of beard. Feuilly's was on his forehead, a dark and still sore horizontal line where he had managed only to save his nose from contact with the edge of the table. The prefect of the Orne had still not replied to the inspector's request, and his frustration at having no further evidence had translated into their continued incarceration at the depot, where no one had ever spent more than a couple of days, the friendly guard said.

"I don't know what you two did, but Christ, anyone with sense would have moved you over to La Force by now."

But Feuilly was glad they had not been moved to La Force. The interrogations had become a daily grind, but the inspector was more likely to leave them to rot, or to be roughed up by informants, in the poorly policed yard at the main prison. Here in the depot, people came and went, no one staying long enough to become a pigeon. The longer they stayed in the depot, the more likely it seemed to Feuilly that they could both somehow get out of this mess. Sitting around in the depot was not exactly a spell in prison, after all. Prison would have had more comforts, such as a longer list of privileges for purchase and the possibility of frequent visitors, but one could always shuffle off a few days at the depot as a mistake. A spell at La Force would condemn them forever. And in the depot, one could hear the thin bells of Notre Dame tolling the hours.

After the first week, without any word from the Orne, the inspector had begun to take his frustration out on his suspects. Feuilly rather thought he had switched to haranguing his prisoners instead of interrogating them, as if one of them might be annoyed into spitting out the truth. Indeed, between the shouts, the slaps, the painful twists of the hair, Feuilly almost wanted to laugh. Here he was, an actual criminal, and the police wanted him to tell them he was someone else. The inspector insisted on eliciting the names of his parents, probably in order to connect them to Cartoux or Aleçon. He did not even harp on the forged papers – if anything, he treated the papers as if they were real, as if there were a Daniel Feuilly, fanmaker from Aubusson, out there somewhere who had been bought off or defrauded or even murdered. Feuilly had paid for the best forgeries possible when he realised he was going to need identity papers, and somehow the expense was both in his favour and contrary to his interests. If he managed to get out of this mess, he was starting to realise, then the papers themselves were still good, because he would have escaped precisely because he was Daniel Feuilly, fanmaker from the Orne, son of Mireille, father unknown. If he did not make it out, it would be because he had defrauded, paid off, or killed Daniel Feuilly, fanmaker from the Orne. His greatest fear was that the prefect would write back to say that there was no possible way the papers could be real, but the town hall in Aubusson had burned back in 1817, and Feuilly had been careful to ask that there be as much truth in the documents as possible. He did not want to have to remember too many lies.

Thus, when the inspector hammered at him to describe where he was from, he answered, "I don't know. We came to Paris when I was too young to remember anything else." Mireille was his mother, a woman who did the best she could, who never admitted that he was the son of a customer but who never denied it, either, who after years of doing the best she could, finally died of consumption at the beginning of the year. Every truthful answer supported the documents – the forger had even managed to add an indecipherable signature that supposedly came from the Lesage chemical mill, though he had advised against back-dated connections. Feuilly had insisted that everything go in, and now everything in the papers supported his story. Everything holding together annoyed the inspector to no end, thus the day he finally grabbed Feuilly's hair and tried to slam his face into the table in order to change the story.

When the inspector got bored, or when he thought a change in tactics appropriate, he started quizzing Feuilly on his education. This usually ended in the inspector being more pissed off but less violent, as his own education had wide gaps and he needed to concentrate in order to catch his suspect out. Feuilly easily bested him in neoclassical theatre, geometry, and various elements of European history, though he did not know his kings of France, his popes, or anything out of Homer's Odyssey – indeed, he earned himself a slap for admitting he did not know there was a full sequel to the Iliad. But that was a rare slap, the violence usually reserved for when he stuck to something of his own history the inspector did not want to believe.

Sometimes, Feuilly would be taken to the interrogation room and left for hours, and the inspector would finally come in, breathless from his rush, and start quietly threatening to hand him over to the Russian legation. These threats were more tiring than anything because all he had ever done against Russia was listen to the plotting of a bunch of men who were in no position to put their plots into action. If anything were to be done against the Russian overseers, it would have to come out of Warsaw, and the exiles here could make all the plans they wanted without causing a bit of trouble for the tsar in St Petersburg. If anything, it was amusing to hear the inspector attempt to threaten Pan Chrzyszczewski because he had to read the name off his pad and stumble over it every time. The tsar had survived the Imperial invasion because he had winter on his side, or so Feuilly had been told by the Poles, not because he commanded great armies that could possibly compare to the French on the march. France had to kowtow to him only because of that winter, not because she had been fairly beaten as she had by the English in the west. The English had only succeeded because of the predations of that Russian winter, in any case. If France had to bow to any foreign power, it was to the English, who deserved some consideration as opponents and who had looked after the royal family in their days of exile, not to the Russians, who could do nothing competently within their own borders, much less outside them. Feuilly's greatest memories of the Russian occupation of Paris were the Cossacks in their grey tunics and long beards beating the poor privates who did not obey quickly enough. It was not as if the Russians had sacked the capital, after all, being too much in awe of it to bring it down. They had walked in after the surrender, set up camp in the parks and the Champ de Mars, and the officers spent their days beating their men, their evenings drinking in the cafés and visiting the brothels. One of the boys swore that he had seen the Cossacks dump salt into their brandy before drinking it, but would even a barbarian desecrate good liquor like that? That detail remained rumour, not fact.

But after a week and a half of gloomy prognostication of what the Russians would do to him, a sense of dungeons frozen nine months of the year seeped under his skin, the depot damp and chill enough at times as October hurried on toward November. He had no contact with that part of his outside world; what if Pan Chrzyszczewski had been arrested and turned over to the Russians? Feuilly would hardly be in any position to rescue Sophie after such a tragedy; indeed, the entire set, from Prince Massalski to the denizens of the cheap café, would all be handed over, to be carted across Europe and thrown into those frozen dungeons, if the frozen dungeons even existed. Feuilly mostly doubted the frozen dungeons guarded by Cossacks who could cut off your head with one blow of their curved Turkish swords, but he could not, with any authority, state that they were categorically false. He had looked at maps and knew that there were parts of Russia even further north than Poland, and if the Poland of his imagination was half the year covered in beautiful white drifts of snow, then perhaps nearly eight months frozen could be true, nine being a minor exaggeration. The inspector would only know what the Russian legation had told him, after all. If he had ever met the Russian legation and was not inventing the entire threat in the belief that Feuilly, having admitted to affections for Sophie, might sacrifice himself rather than sentence her father to freeze to death.

Feuilly spent most of his time trying to figure out just what the inspector wanted. There was nothing else to do in the depot except to chat with Laforêt. The longer they were kept there, unshaved, unwashed, their clothes wrinkled from where they slept on the floor, the more the varied characters who came through avoided them. The corner they kept to themselves might as well have been a private cell after a week. So Feuilly spent his time in mental labour, using all the knowledge at his command to construct logical plots and knock them down again. Certain that the inspector considered Laforêt his key witness against the conspiracy he must be chasing, Feuilly instructed his friend to answer all the questions asked, to worry about saving himself. "He'll ask you everything I've ever said to you, and don't worry about me. You can tell him everything. But don't agree to any more lies, understand? The truth is the only thing that will get us out of here, free and clear. If you agree to anything false, it'll be on your head." Which was something of a cruel threat, really, but he continued to swap stories with Laforêt in large part so there would be something to tell the inspector. He kept most of his musings to himself, not wanting too much knowledge to get back to suspicious quarters.

There were dungeons below where Aleçon, if he were still acting crazy, might be held, Feuilly knew, and private rooms above, though Cartoux must have been cut loose or moved to better private rooms at La Force by now, he told himself. Was Aleçon being watched or had he succeeded in killing himself? Was he tied to a bed in the infirmary at La Force, where he probably belonged? Had it all been a feint and he had at last confessed it all and now sat in solitary at La Force, since an admitted traitor would probably not be permitted to mingle with the other prisoners?

Montparnasse came again, bringing fifteen francs with his poor acting and foul mouth. "What the fuck are they doing to you? Don't they got a barber in here?"

"No, because I shouldn't still be here." He hugged the boy tightly. "Does anyone know anything?"

"Sit tight, that's all."

"College isn't any fun, I'll have you know. I sit around all day and swap stories with a chap who ran out of good ones a week ago. Or else I answer questions, and if the copper doesn't like my answers, he does this to me." He pointed out the bruise on his forehead.

"You ain't even been in a fight?"

"The table wanted my nose – I think I won."

Parnasse rolled his eyes. "I think you ain't doing it proper."

"I'd rather stay here than be in La Force. I just have to ride the situation until it throws me off, you know? I hope it won't be too much longer." Parnasse may not have cared, but Feuilly needed him to cling to just this once. He was not acting for the benefit of the guard but for his own peace of mind. To say it properly to someone who was not stuck behind the iron grating was comforting, just as curling up next to Laforêt in the night was comforting. In different circumstances, Feuilly would have insisted on his independence, his ability to get through anything without anyone. But a warm body made the cold stone floor more tolerable, and an audience made assertions of hope sound reasonable. Parnasse did manage his acting a little better this time, returning Feuilly's embrace as if he actually enjoyed it. Feuilly clung to him a moment, stroking his long hair. But he knew it had no real meaning, and he forced himself to release the boy. Bending down so they were face to face, he told him, "Tell His Holiness I'm holding on."

When Parnasse left, looking relieved to be on his way, Feuilly turned to the guard. "Now. Seriously. You really mean you can't get a barber in here?"

"Under orders. You might overpower him and take the razor."

"And do what with it? You let me have a spoon, and I could probably turn that into a damned knife if I really wanted to end up dead. Ten francs. You have all of it if my friend and I can get a shave. To look at us, you'd think we were fucking animals."

"If they'd just send you two over to La Force . . ."

"Is that ever going to happen?" Feuilly sighed and gave the man a franc. "Two bottles of wine, and you know, I could do things with the bottles, too."

"Ten francs?"

"We're probably still here because we look more guilty by the day," Feuilly argued.

When the guard returned with the wine, he said, "I'll see what I can do."

"What he can do?" Laforêt asked.

Feuilly handed him one of the bottles. "I'm trying to bribe him to get a barber in here."

"You are a goddamned prince. How much longer do you think we'll be here?"

"We should have been transferred to La Force a week ago," Feuilly admitted. The letter should have been answered a week ago. Were they being kept at the depot until the letter was answered? What if the letter was lost? Surely another letter had been sent – were they now waiting on the reply to the second letter?

Two days later, at midnight, Feuilly was awakened by the friendly guard, who should have been off duty. "One at a time, in the office, and be quiet about it. Where's the money?" It wasn't much of a bribe compared to what the men upstairs could do, but then, Feuilly reminded himself, this poor sap was stuck down here with the men who couldn't pay. The depot wasn't like La Force – people were usually gone within a day and willing to do without certain comforts because they would be moving on soon enough. He was probably doing better out of Feuilly than he had the entire year.

The barber looked more to be someone's apprentice, but he had a razor and a mug. The razor wasn't as sharp as it should have been, and there was no mirror so Feuilly had no idea how raw his face must have looked afterwards, but it was a relief to be rid of the itchy beard and the certainty that he looked like he belonged in prison. Laforêt ended up with nick in his chin, but when he was brought back to the cell, he looked far less frightened than he had the entire time they'd been stuck there.

The inspector was less enthused by what Feuilly's bribe had bought them. He hit first and only then asked, "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" Feuilly stayed silent rather than risk a sarcastic comeback. "I didn't think I needed to stay warm since the Russians don't seem to be coming for me any time soon" was probably going to result in a broken nose. The questioning followed the ordinary lines, however, leaving Feuilly more certain than ever that they were merely marking time until the letter arrived from the Orne.

Laforêt's interrogation immediately followed Feuilly's. Sometimes they were taken out together and put in separate rooms; sometimes the inspector cared only about Feuilly. But this time, Feuilly was taken first, then Laforêt was brought out as Feuilly was returned to the holding cell. The interrogation did not last long, but Laforêt returned with a red mark on his jaw.

"You did an end run around him, didn't you?" he asked.

"I guess we were supposed to look like animals and have everyone afraid of us." Indeed, even if their clothes were wrinkled, the other inhabitants of the cell avoided them less in next few days. They had been stuck in the depot for two full weeks, when a letter to the Orne should have taken a couple of days to get there and a couple of days to come back. Three at the most if the weather was terrible. There could have been several exchanges of letters by now – why was the prefect not responding to a treason inquiry? Moreover, the next several days were even more miserable as they were forced onto rations, having spent the week's donation almost all at once.

"All right, you bastard," the inspector finally came out with a few days later. "Who the fuck do you know in Alençon?"

"What?" Feuilly was completely confused. Aleçon was a guilty head trip who ought to be in the dungeons.

"You're not from Aubusson. I will swear on the Bible you are not from Aubusson. Someone in Alençon is keeping my letter from being answered, and I think you know something about it."

It took a moment for Feuilly to realise what was being said because of the unfortunate coincidence between the guilty man's name and the capital of the Orne. But at last, a piece of actual information. The inspector was awaiting a reply, and one was not coming. Something was keeping the prefect from answering the letter, supposing the prefect got the letter. "Maybe the mail lost it?" he dared ask, as innocently as he could manage.

He got a slap for his audacity. "Who do you know in Alençon?"

"No one. I swear!" The inspector seemed to realise he had let something slip, and the look on his face caused Feuilly to brace himself for another blow. But the blow never came.

"We'll see how the Normans handle a real investigation," he threatened.

But Feuilly was sent back to the holding cell. If anything, he felt rather cheerful. As he told Laforêt, "I think he's taking a trip to check everything out himself. Three days holiday, at least."

They had four days of utter boredom, in which their bruises were permitted to heal and their stomachs to remind them they should not have wasted so much on their self-esteem. Feuilly did have to threaten a gentleman who decided to take their closeness as a suggestion that they were nancies willing to help him out for free, but that was the one bit of entertainment they had all week.

"They get picked up for soliciting," Feuilly explained to Laforêt, his knowledge gleaned from how Babet considered them easy profits. "The coppers don't care who's a whore and who's a customer; they just bring everyone in and let the judge sort it out. And he can suck his own fucking cock," he added, making a rude gesture at the lecherous gentleman. Not that he introduced any distance between himself and Laforêt – they had to protect themselves and their territory. It wasn't worth losing the corner to one nance. At least that might be turned into the story of a fight for Parnasse's benefit, Feuilly thought.

But on the evening of the fourth day of their holiday from the inspector, the guard motioned to Feuilly. "It's your lucky day, boy."

"What the hell could you possibly mean by that?"

"I was told to cut you both loose."

"So we can get picked up for escaping?"

The guard shrugged. "Not my problem, is it?"

Feuilly beckoned to Laforêt. "He says we're out."

"What? Can't be true."

"See? He doesn't even believe it," Feuilly insisted.

The guard unlocked the cell. "Believe it, don't believe it, I don't care. But you can't stay in there."

Feuilly and Laforêt exchanged glances. With a shrug, Feuilly pushed past the guard. "Do I get my knife back?"

"They've got your papers and anything they took off you at the office."

A functionary handed over the papers, but Feuilly's knife had somehow disappeared. But soon enough, they were standing in the dark streets, slick with drizzle they had not even known was falling.

"What do we do now?" Laforêt asked.

"I doubt it's a trick since we had to sign for our papers. Go home, I guess?" Feuilly thought he caught sight of a man in shadow and groaned inwardly. Claquesous was either keeping watch or had got word of his release. But when he looked back, the shadow was gone, and it was impossible to tell which direction it had taken. Perhaps there had been no shadow at all, no one come to meet him. He was going to have to work off this loan, but it seemed possible that he just might be permitted to have a night to himself, assuming no one came to his lodgings. "Go home," he told Laforêt. "Take care of yourself. Keep your nose clean."

"You sound like I'm not going to see you again."

"Do what you have to do. But I suppose, if this mess hasn't blown everything up, I can be found drinking with the Poles at Didier's. If I don't see you again, good luck." They shook hands, Laforêt looking utterly confused in the flickering light of the street lamp. Feuilly slipped off into the dark.

He knew he ought to go find Babet, to thank him for the loan and ask how he wanted it paid off. But he could always say he had never seen Claquesous. Claquesous, if it were Claquesous, had not made it easy to follow him. Babet knew Feuilly hated the dens of the Cité slums; even if they were in convenient proximity to the prefecture of police, he would never ask Feuilly to a rendez-vous in any of those holes. And it may have been no one at all. On the pretext, if he ran into anyone, of having to look out the lay of the land, he went home.

The concierge was not at all happy to see him. "There you are! Police everywhere! I run a clean house, as I told you when you moved in. You'll be leaving tonight, I hope?"

"Please, Mme Ladot, let me have one night. One night. I'll clear out in the morning."

She opened the door a little further and shook her head but beckoned him in anyway. "I run a clean house."

"I know. I promise I'll leave in the morning." He had rather expected it; Laforêt was going to have an unwelcome surprise when he returned to wherever it was he lodged. There was no point in being anything other than reasonable; to be angry would only lead to his immediate eviction, and he had no desire to spend his first night free in a flop house.

"What did they do to you?" Mme Ladot asked, handing him a lit candle so he did not have to navigate the narrow stairs in the dark.

He assumed she had seen the bruise on his forehead. "The truth wasn't very much to the inspector's taste, that's all."

"The things they do to innocent people." He almost wanted to laugh – she was evicting him because the police had searched his room, but she felt sorry for him because he was innocent. Because if he were guilty, he would not have turned up tonight.

A look at his room, however, sent away all laughter. The police had slit open his mattress in their search, and straw was strewn about the room, covering the books they had thrown every which way. They had not returned the novel or Pan Chrzyszczewski's pamphlet, but at least the art book was still intact, lying face down, a couple crumpled pages the only damage. The canvas sack lay in the middle of the floor, blood stains immediately visible, but perhaps they had taken them for mud instead.

"Mme Ladot?" he called down from the first landing.

"What do you want now?"

"Could I borrow a broom?"

"What do you need a broom for?" She pulled herself up the four flights of stairs and shook her head at the sight that greeted her, appalled at the carnage. "That mattress was mine."

"And I'll pay you for it as soon as I can." He felt awful that she had been dragged into the whole thing – police in her house, police tearing up her furniture, a reputation now in the neighbourhood, all because of someone else's ridiculous petty trick.

He swept up the straw and tried to stuff it back through the slit they had cut. The result was lumpy, and his sewing skills were poor enough in the dim light that his attempt at repair did not even keep the straw from poking back out. But it was the best he could do at putting back what had been destroyed on his account. It was nearly closing time by then, he realised from the sounds in the street below his window. He dug into the little hole he had managed to hollow out in the corner behind the door. The police had not found it. His savings, all eight francs, were still intact. Pocketing them, he hurried down the stairs.

"Madame?"

"What now?" she asked, taking the broom.

"Might I borrow a bucket? To try to catch one of the water sellers at the end of his round."

"Water at this time of night," she muttered, but she gave him what he asked.

Feuilly had to walk up and down and nearly thought about going to one of the pumps, though it would be so very far to come back, when at last he found a man who would come most of the way with him and sell him a bucketful, though he would have to carry it from the corner and up the stairs himself. He had been resigned to that from the beginning, however, and agreed, though the price of three sous was high even at that time of night.

Alone in his room, in the light of a candle across the street, he stripped off his clothes and attempted to wash off the dank feel of the prison. He rarely bought a full bucket of water, using only a pitcher for the usual daily ablutions of face and hands and groin, but tonight, he scrubbed himself from head to toe, even washing his hair, desperate that soap succeed where imagination failed. But huddled in his lumpy bed, he felt not newly born but stripped raw, as the prostitute must when washing away the predations of her trade each night. The scent of soap had just as much shame as the stink of the prison cell.


	27. Chapter 27

Feuilly woke early the next morning, his back still stiff from so many nights on the hard stone floors of the police depot, and rolled over, staring at the stained ceiling in the grey dawn light. He had promised to leave, and he would leave. He had less than eight francs, owed Babet thirty-five, and needed to find a new room. The books, and his Sunday clothes, might together get him another twenty, perhaps even thirty if he let the art book go, too. But he would have to pay half a quarter's rent out of whatever sum he could scrape together, or at least the six francs for a month in a dormitory bed, an intolerable descent. Even when he worked at the mill, he had managed to get himself a room as soon as possible, no public dormitories for him. There was no choice but to work off his loan from Babet.

Yet with all his possessions carefully folded and stowed in the rough canvas bag, he wandered not to the Temple, but to the workshop. It was the habit of the morning, even with his life weighing heavily on his back. As he climbed the stairs, telling himself he was a fool to have come looking for anyone, he heard the murmur of voices, which stopped as he approached the final turn. Coming around the corner, he at first saw shadows at the top landing, dimly lit by a very filthy window. But soon enough, he was lost in the gasps and grins of relief. Mme Pinon and Sophie had been sitting on the landing, and Feuilly was grateful not only for the mere sight of them but even more for the fact that Sophie immediately reached for his hand.

"God be praised," Mme Pinon said. "What news?"

"Not much. They finally let me and Laforêt out last night, but we've not seen M. Cartoux since we were all arrested. It was Aleçon. That's all I know. What are you doing here?"

"Trying to find out what happened to everyone," she told him. "Where else are we going to get any sort of answers?"

"I have not yet found a new job," Sophie explained, still clutching his hand. "We meet here in the morning. Perhaps, if he can, M. Cartoux will come back. You are here, too. We all want to know if we can get our last wages, I think."

"I think we could all do with it." Feuilly slipped the bag off his shoulder, letting it drop to the step with a heavy thud, before sitting down with the women. "I am so glad to see you both."

"What's in the bag?"

"I got evicted because the police searched my room." The truth slipped out more easily than he might have expected, perhaps because Sophie knew he had been arrested and held his hand anyway. The strange events of the past two weeks had not set him apart from her after all. "How much trouble did they put you through?"

"Not much," Mme Pinon said. "They just asked us questions about all of you. We were home in time for dinner."

"Did they come for your father?" he asked Sophie.

"No. Perhaps they saw him at the café? They did not take him away, but he would not tell me if they did talk to him."

Feuilly let out a sigh of relief. In response to Sophie's curious look, he told her, "The inspector did not like the truth, so he kept threatening to hand me over to the Russians."

"The Russians," she spit out. "If your people still bowed to the Russians, we would not be here. Why should they want you if they do not want my father?"

"That is what I thought. But how was I to know your father was not picked up? When the police first came, I thought it was all about him."

"So did I. What did M. Aleçon do that the police must scare us all like this?"

"A petty nasty joke, as far as I can tell. The inspector was comparing handwriting and asking me if I ever worked with a knife, so Aleçon must have done something to the montures of the mock-ups we sent to the palace."

"What a child," Mme Pinon muttered.

"He'll pay for it however the government decide. At least Laforêt and I are finally clear, since the police couldn't connect us to something we knew nothing about. But I don't know where they took M. Cartoux. We were kept in the main holding cell at the depot attached to the prefecture, but he could probably pay for accommodations."

Heavy footsteps on the stairs quieted them all, as if somehow their silence would make the entire situation less embarrassing should their boss find them all waiting for him in the stairwell. It was not Cartoux at all, however, but Laforêt. He greeted Feuilly with a quick handshake. "Glad to see the girls made it out. No sign of the boss?"

"We have come every morning, and he has not come," Sophie told him.

"Maybe they cut him loose last night with the rest of us. He has to come to clear the place out, right?"

"And if he does, do you think he's going to have cash on hand to pay four salaries?" Feuilly asked.

"I could use the pay, and no mistake, but I also want to know how I'm supposed to account for three years of work, what with the way it's all ended. And I thought better to come here first, instead of straight to the cafés, in case there's something he wants to say." He dropped the sack he was carrying next to Feuilly's. "How long do we wait?"

"When the church tolls noon," Mme Pinon explained. "Then we go looking for work."

"No luck yet, I take it."

"None for me. Sophie's had some luck."

But Sophie reddened. "I do not call it luck. I went to see about a position, but the man wanted me to model rather than paint. When I told him that I was not that sort of girl, he offered me four francs a day. As if more money could make me that sort of girl!"

"At least you still live at home, had two incomes. Feuilly and I are out on the streets, about to beg for our bread."

Feuilly pulled a face, stopping himself from admitting that he already had a line on a position. A line he disliked for a position he reviled, but a possible income regardless. He turned back to Sophie instead. "An insult, that beauty should be put before talent."

"You notice it's the pretty people who have the talent," Laforêt said to Mme Pinon, then grinned and dodged when Feuilly tried to jokingly punch him.

"You should go to him this afternoon," Sophie insisted. "Then we may at least see if there ever was work."

Feuilly liked sitting on the stairs, chatting with everyone. It felt honest, natural, a better sort of existence that he was going to have to leave behind in a few hours. He could fall into the old patterns easily enough, he feared, but he wished he could leave them behind instead. Indeed, he was not beyond hoping that somehow Cartoux would come, able to pay them each the ten francs they were owed, and that Babet would somehow accept a mere repayment in cash of the money he had lent.

But eventually, the church bells could faintly be heard tolling a midday call to prayer. "I suppose that's it, then."

"Back tomorrow?"

"Until I have something better to do," Mme Pinon replied.

Sophie gave Feuilly the name and address of the supposed miniaturist who had advertised for an assistant. They were all about to part when heavy footsteps on the stair quieted them, the hope that Cartoux had at last come rising in Feuilly's breast.

"What in God's name are you all doing here?" It was indeed Cartoux, in a dismal mood. "Do you think I can pay you? Out. All of you."

"I just need my livret signed," Feuilly dared to tell him. "That's all."

"Fine. You can come in. The rest of you, I know where to find you, I think. The two of you, I definitely know how to find you." Sophie blushed at the obvious link between her and Feuilly, but Feuilly half-smiled, rather grateful for the recognition.

Cartoux unlocked the door and ushered Feuilly over to the desk. Everything was covered in dust, it having gone untouched for more than two weeks. Finding a pen and a bottle of ink in one of the drawers, Cartoux motioned for Feuilly's livret.

"I didn't expect to see you here." He kept the pen poised to sign, but addressed the papers rather than Feuilly. "I don't know who you are or who you know, but whatever you did to get us out of there, I'm grateful for it."

"I don't know anyone, monsieur," Feuilly insisted. How could he know anyone of any use?

Cartoux finally signed, filling in the relevant dates. "It wasn't Laforêt they meant. I heard the guards. 'The boy is to be released, and all of his associates.' One of them was not at all keen on obeying those orders."

"It must be a mistake. I don't know anyone."

Cartoux dug in his pocket and pulled out a gold louis. "I'm grateful."

Feuilly pushed it back across the table. This was hardly a time to take a bribe or reward or even just the ten francs or so that he was owed for his last week of work. "What will you do now?"

"Sell up. Retire to the country. My wife has a bit of land." He rolled his eyes. "Can you imagine me the _cultivateur_?"

"Good luck to you."

Cartoux pushed the coin back towards him. "If it hadn't been for that idiot, your design should have made our fortunes. I don't care what you are, really – if they hadn't revoked my business license, I'd think I could start over with a man like you, if you wanted it."

"I don't deserve your money, monsieur," Feuilly was forced to insist. "If you can pay me more than I am owed, why can you not pay the rest of them what they are owed?"

"You don't want my last coin in the world?"

"No. It is for your family, not for misplaced gratitude. I didn't get us out. How could I?" But it was with sadness that he watched Cartoux put the coin back into his pocket. That coin, with the sale of his worldly goods, could have enabled him to pay Babet in cash rather than in work.

"Then I guess I misheard."

"You did, monsieur." But he offered his hand, even though it was rather above his station to engage with a gentleman as if he were an equal. "Good luck to you."

Still, Cartoux took it with force, not with distaste or mere politeness. "And to you."

What could Cartoux have meant? Feuilly asked himself as he descended to the street. The boy and his associates. If it were a mistake, then why were their papers ready to be picked up? If it were a coincidence, then Cartoux had been taken over to La Force; it could be no coincidence if he had still been at the depot.

But he had little time to contemplate just why anyone would have ordered him released – Laforêt was waiting for him in the street outside. "I had a question."

"There's no money for anyone," Feuilly lied.

"That's not it. I was wondering, well, since you got chucked out, too, I guess, would you want to go in together? On a room, I mean. It'd be better than the dormitories."

Feuilly's first instinct was to tell him that it was impossible, but he soon thought better of it. If he were rooming with Laforêt, he would hardly be available at night without suspicion, but the same would be true of the dormitories. And if he kept close to Laforêt, it might be more difficult for Babet to pull him back in. The last time, Feuilly had felt himself unworthy of making acquaintances, much less friends, among honest people. The dogmatic nature of youth had told him that he would always be tarnished by his initial associations and did not deserve to tarnish honest people through intercourse with him. But he was older now, and less rash. "I'll have to think about it. Look, give me until four o'clock. I've got to at least see what this lot will fetch."

"I'll meet you at the café Robillard."

An attachment to Laforêt was not something Feuilly had ever sought. How could he possibly explain the night work, the strange merchandise coming in and going out, the low taverns it was professionally necessary to frequent? How could he possibly pull an honest man into any association with the criminal world he knew too well? The right thing to do, for Laforêt's sake, was to reject the offer, though it was kindly meant, just as the right thing to do was to say goodbye forever to Sophie. The police themselves had made it impossible to take up an honest life for any length of time.

Yet to go back entirely would be to reject everything he had managed to learn in the past five years. It had been so easy, after living the poor, lonely exile he thought he deserved, to come back to friends, warmth, and a life that used his talents. He had given up nothing in coming back to Babet the first time, really. Indeed, life was much better with the attentions of what could almost be called family. Not that Laforêt could ever be considered so closely, but with Laforêt's presence, Feuilly could never let himself go too far to permit himself near Sophie.

He cursed himself for not taking the twenty francs. It was the last gasp of the honest man, but that twenty francs, plus whatever he could manage to get for his belongings, could have permitted him to make a cash payment to Babet tonight and have the whole thing done with. Or most of the thing done with, because it would be profoundly unfair to pay only the cash and not acknowledge the difficulty Parnasse had been put through, the arrangements Hogu had made, and anything Feuilly did not yet know about what Babet had done during his imprisonment. Some favours, at the very least, were necessary. And someone had to do something about Parnasse – his terrible acting was going to get someone into real trouble someday. Was no one sneaking him into the theatres?

Bargaining at the Temple proved of little use. The books fetched ten francs, somehow, and he still held on to the art book, but his clothes were hardly worth anything. Feuilly packed them back into his bag, knowing that Babet would merely mock him for going around in a rough jacket – someone that pretty had no call to dress like he worked for a living, Babet had implied more than once. He had no choice but to go back to Babet for some period of time, so it would go better for him if he looked the part.

Ten francs – just the amount Cartoux owed everyone. Had Feuilly taken the napoleon, he would be clear of the cash debt. But Babet would not let him go so easily, Feuilly knew, and what could he do with fifty sous and no job in any case? He had to go back to Babet, so it was better that he go in comfort.

Seventeen francs could get him a room for rent and enough to live on for a few days – not a furnished room, but at least somewhere private and a couple of blankets to make sleeping on the floor a bit warmer. Laforêt's offer had not been forgotten. To accept would be to afford a nicer room, possibly a bed, honest company; to decline would be to protect the young man from a life he assuredly could not grasp. The reality had nothing in common with Lemaître's Macaire, which undoubtedly was contributing to a flood of idiotic apprentices who thought a life of unabashed crime vastly more fun than a life of honest labour. But in Laforêt's presence, Feuilly could keep more closely to the right side of the law, could force himself to continue to look for honest labour, because an honest man would always be watching. It was a hard thing to ask anyone, to simply stand his ground so that a drowning man could use him as a life preserver, yet Feuilly could already see how easy it was going to be to slide away from the life he had just begun to build, to abandon the Poles and Laforêt and even the church because he was too black to deserve the consideration of honest men and honest institutions.

But the law was a farce in any case, wasn't it? It had failed to appreciate just what it had grasped in its claws, while it rent the very charter that permitted it to continue. The law said the patriotic Poles were traitors, as their country had been torn apart by emperors who now demanded loyalty from their conquered populace. A childish joke was deemed treason and three innocent men were ruined on the altar of security. Aleçon would lose his head one day soon, the place de Grève newly awash in political blood, and strange boys would cheer, as Feuilly had done in his youth to the murderer Laumond. Would cheer merely for the sight of blood, not because a threat to the monarchy had been eliminated. Parnasse would be one of them, ignorance watching ignorance in cold blood just as Feuilly had watched Laumond's execution. Laumond had not even been a comrade in arms, merely a petty murderer, unworthy of anyone's attention. Aleçon's act had been petty and childish and led to nothing but his own condemnation, but at least there had been a greater idea behind it than the covetousness in slitting a fruit-seller's throat. The law that would treat both men in the same way for such radically different acts was, at bottom, deserving of a cry of "Down with all privilege!" But what was the use of lashing out when only the police would hear that cry?

The café Robillard had too few candles lit against the wintery gloom. "How much have you got in savings?" Feuilly asked Laforêt before he even bothered to sit down.

Laforêt did not look the least surprised at the rather personal question. "Thirteen francs, seven sous."

"I've seventeen francs, plus a few sous. How long do you think it'll take to get work?"

"I'll have something inside a week. May not be permanent, but it'll be a start, at least."

"What do you think we could do with twenty francs?"

"So you do want to go in together."

"I – christ. Let me just lay it out for you. The friend who helped us out may have work for me. But it would be at night, see? And I'd ask, I mean, I used to do this alone," Feuilly stammered. How could he possibly explain what needed to be explained? "Quiet during the day and a decent curtain on the window and no questions is all I'm asking for. No questions," he insisted. "Is that understood?"

Laforêt was not looking at him. He knows, Feuilly thought, christ, he knows, and it's all over. "I owe you more than thirteen francs, seven sous."

"We can worry about that later."

"I owe your friend, I mean."

"Don't worry about that right now."

"It's easier on you if I say yes, isn't it?"

"I don't want to pull you into anything."

Laforêt looked up at last, meeting his eyes. "I owe you. No questions. Until the beginning of the year."

That gave six weeks, more or less, in which to get Babet off his back. "Deal." Feuilly put down his ten francs. "You find the place."

"There's a place I've had in mind, actually, that I thought you'd want in on, but I can't make promises about curtains."

"What do you mean?"

"Garret but the roof doesn't slope too much, two windows, and plenty of room for two beds and a table. It's fifteen but unfurnished."

"Good light?" Feuilly cursed himself for caring, but it sounded too good to be true. It had to be two rooms somehow knocked together.

"You're not the only one who has projects. It should be."

"How do you know about it?"

"The family who had it was moving out when I was rowing with my girl."

"It's probably let by now."

"No one wanted it at the beginning of the quarter, so far as I know."

"You're in charge. Do what you can. I'll meet you back here at ten tonight."

"Where are you going?"

"Business. No questions."

Laforêt tipped his hat. "See you at ten."


	28. Chapter 28

Somehow the smoke and grease smelled more rank in the old tavern than they did anywhere else in Paris. It was not that Vivienne was a terrible housekeeper, but that the clientele brought their own dirt and smells, the gutter come inside. The candles seemed to burn lower, the smoke to hang more thickly in the air. It was warm inside, to be sure, but Feuilly shuddered anyway as he stepped across the threshold. Less than a year and he was already back where he had started. What had ever been the point of trying to go straight if he would always end up back here?

Babet and Gueulemer were at the table in the back corner, murmuring over their glasses. Gueulemer saw Feuilly first. "The kid's here."

"Sit," Babet ordered. "Where were you last night?"

"Tying up loose ends." Feuilly straddled a chair backwards. "Eviction notice, attempt to get my last week's pay, all that rot."

"How're you settled?"

"Staying with a mate."

"The kid in jail with you?"

"Who else?"

"I hear he isn't exactly prime company."

"He owes me. And I owe you. If Hogu says he's soft, well, he's right, but he isn't all that bad on the whole."

"Is he to be trusted?"

"He isn't to know. He knows that he's to keep his mouth shut. I can't see any better choice when it all comes down to it. It's not as if I can safely spend a couple months in some dormitory, is it? So let's get right to it. You're down a couple pairs of hands, am I right?"

"Brujon's going to trial; Hogu might be able to get himself out of it."

"Thank you, by the way. I'll stay as long as it takes to pay you back. Not just the cash," Feuilly insisted. "The favour meant a lot, and it's worth something."

"I should hope. It wasn't easy, getting you the fuck out of there."

"The cop was completely off his nut," Gueulemer added.

"The hell?"

"Your friends have always looked out for you," Babet reminded him.

"As if you could shut down a treason investigation and get three men released."

"Came from higher up than us," Gueulemer said.

"Of course it did," Babet snapped. "If we could save your stupid head, do you think we'd let a man like Brujon go to trial? Treason. What the fuck were you thinking, getting yourself involved in politics? That isn't going straight. And what's this shit about foreign exiles?"

"You can let that one go. Sounded to me like the girl was worth it," Gueulemer leered.

"She's not for the two of you to discuss." He hadn't properly said goodbye to Sophie, even as he knew he could hardly permit himself to attend church anymore, not if he were returning to this sort of life. The idea that others might consider his attachment warranted rather than improper was hard to bear.

"No need to be defensive," Babet reminded him. "You wanted help; we needed to know just what the situation was."

"Speaking of help," Feuilly tried to change the subject, "Parnasse needs a lot of it. He wasn't convincing in the least."

"You weren't as brilliant as you must think you were," Gueulemer informed him.

"Really? Come, I can't have been that bad. He was sobbing like the damned fox trying to guilt the crow into giving up his cheese."

"You never sobbed for me, I'll give you that," Gueulemer said.

"He was supposed to, the little brat. Why the hell do you think we put in you in the bloody dress? A little girl was supposed to get sympathy."

Feuilly cursed Babet for bringing that up again. "Just because I didn't play into your most ridiculous games doesn't mean I was total rubbish."

"It was the most entertaining visit I ever had."

"I could walk right out of here," Feuilly threatened.

"Sit down, have a drink," Gueulemer offered.

"Can't afford it." But Feuilly did settle in. "What's the job?"

"House in the rue des Rosiers."

"What do you want with the Jews?"

"That should be obvious enough. This one's a jeweler."

"Security?"

"Nothing to worry about. It's a flat, not a private house. We're only after the obvious."

"You know I hate going into flats. A house gives me space to work."

"This'll be quick, contained."

"Brujon got jacked over the damned furniture," Gueulemer admitted.

"So no distractions, the take is easily moved, we're in and out. What's to do with the neighbours?"

"That's what we need you for."

"I pick locks. I don't do anything else."

"Maybe your friend could be some help."

"He stays out of this."

"The next door neighbour is a girl who isn't half-bad looking. Well, of course she isn't, she's a Jew," Babet added with something of a leer himself. "She needs to be kept out of the way. Do we know anyone else who isn't half-bad looking?"

"I'm a damned expensive decoy, you know."

"Which is why it would be nice if your friend would pull his weight."

"If I'm decoy, who is breaking in?"

"We've got a false key."

"This is what happens when I leave you? You were going to start training Parnasse, I thought. I gave him to you five years ago," Feuilly complained. "Isn't he game?"

"He's not one for detail work," Babet explained.

"Fuck."

"He can do other things. He's not a complete waste, I mean," Gueulemer explained.

"Maybe if you let him get jacked, he'd grow up a little."

"Not everyone was born old like you," Babet argued. "You see now why we need you?"

This was not at all how the evening was supposed to go. Feuilly had thought he would turn up, be told what he needed to do in order to pay back the loan, engage in a little small talk, then leave. He was not supposed to watch how everything had started going downhill in the ten months since he had last seen anyone. Two years had not set them back this badly, even if it did send Gueulemer back to prison. Brujon was the latest casualty, but it was expected, and it was his second stretch, after all. But false keys, which automatically drew a longer sentence when one was caught with them, apartment robberies where the neighbours on all sides could hear, Parnasse worthless to train for anything requiring serious thought and application – to leave had blessed him and cursed them somehow, and to return was only going to blacken him. What benefit could be gained by staying beyond two or three jobs when those two or three must be dangerous enough? Gueulemer's return could not have wreaked such havoc with Babet's general plans – they had worked together for years. Had Vidocq managed to infiltrate, or at least his methods seep in to undermine the old loyalties Babet had always cherished, the loyalties Feuilly had been taught as long as he could remember? Quick and violent was certainly one of the styles Babet followed, the one that best connected him with Claquesous, but it was not at all the style he had tried to teach Feuilly. Feuilly's hands had been white a year and a half ago, carefully kept that way so far as he could tell. He had been taught to use a knife, but the murder was hardly a premeditated entry into manhood. But looking back, it was easy to contemplate the murder as being the beginning of everything turning into the slop he swore he was now privy to.

"You need me, all right, but how much do I need you? I'll pay you back. I'll do the job however it needs to be done. But I save my own skin, understood?"

"What other way could it be?"

He clasped hands with both men, sealing a deal that felt too starkly about his fate, before heading back into the cold December night. Laforêt would be waiting.

But a female voice called his name, and he had to turn around. Vivienne had come out into the cold, just to see him. He took her hands his his, rubbing her fleshy fingers. "You'll freeze out here. I'm coming back soon enough. I promise."

"I'm sorry it all went south."

"So am I. Your father will kill me if he catches us out here."

She sighed. "You're probably right. You really will be back?"

"Tomorrow. I'll stick around long enough we can talk then. I promise."

It was rather nice to see her grin before she ducked back inside. Viv was the only person worth coming back for.

Laforêt was standing at Robillard's counter, attempting to flirt badly with the proprietress, who was easily old enough to be his mother. "A glass for my friend," he told her when Feuilly came up to him. "Put it on my tab."

Feuilly motioned the bottle away. "No, thank you. I don't use credit." Laforêt gave him an incredulous look. It was odd that Feuilly had mostly managed to avoid debt, when everyone in Paris seemed to live entirely on credit, but his self-respect depended on owing the rest of the world as little as possible. "If I don't owe anyone anything, they have no power over me," he tried to explain as they sat down at a table covered with the dirty glasses of a group who had just left.

"You'll have to get over that if you're looking for work," Laforêt told him. "You keep your business to yourself, and that's fine, but I'm starting to think there are ways the world works you don't quite understand. How did you find Cartoux?" The question sounded more like an accusation.

"The _Gazette de France_."

"And how were you looking for work before that?"

"A man in a bookshop keeps a list."

Laforêt shook his head. "How can you possibly know about prison, and be willing to share a flat with a chap like me, if that's the sort of work that's natural to you?"

"It's the sort of work I wanted," Feuilly answered defensively. "It's not at all what I was trained for."

"What did you apprentice at?"

"Nothing."

"I might have guessed. This is the way the world works," Laforêt began to lecture him, "if you've run away from your master and want nothing more to do with that line of work. The café owners run everything. Why should a man of business take on someone he doesn't know? Because someone he does know vouches for him. Who does everyone know? The café owner. Cartoux keeps a small shop and with the women in there, some of the old ways just can't stick. But in an ordinary shop, this is how it would have worked. You needed a job, so you asked the owner of the local if he had heard of anything in your line. He might or might not have, or he might say that he'd think about it. Next time you came in, he might have heard of something. A man needs labour, he goes to the local and asks if the owner has heard of anyone looking for a job. Put two and two together. You've been spoken for by someone the boss trusts. And, because it was all done through the local, you probably already know several of the men you'd be working with. So what does the café owner get out of it, you may ask? Tradition. One has to baptise the new job, after all, and you'll do it at his place. Everyone has a stake, so everyone wins."

"Quid pro quo," Feuilly sighed. Stated baldly, honesty did not sound as honest as he had somehow managed to still think.

"What?"

"Latin phrase. Something for something."

"It's how the world works. They must hide that better where you come from."

"They don't hide it at all," Feuilly admitted. "What's the word on the flat?"

Laforêt put a key on the table. "91 rue Quincampoix, fifth floor, above a moroccan leather shop. Windows face the courtyard, but the stink isn't too bad. I managed two blankets at the Temple, but really, after the past couple of weeks, one would be luxury enough, wouldn't it? We can work out furniture as we can afford it."

"Is your girl going to be pissed off that you're moving in across the hall?"

"She doesn't scare me. It's not like I gave her the clap I got from Fanny Rosier, which only happened when we were having a row anyway. Oh, and there is a fireplace. It's a proper room, even up that high."

"Fifteen for the month?" Laforêt had to be lying about the stink. Or the size of the room. Or something – fifteen for what he had promised seemed too cheap.

"And the blankets ran me six francs all told, but you're not to give me another centime because I sure as hell owe you more than ten sous."

There was no going back. The money was spent. They had a key. "Well, let's see what it looks like."

The rue Quincampoix was narrower than Feuilly had remembered, more an alley than a street. The house was nearly at the corner with the rue aux Ours, a wide front, the windows on the ground floor covered with wooden shutters at that time of evening. Laforêt had to knock several times, eventually shouting "Mère Fablet!", before the concierge would open for them. "This is my friend Feuilly" was the only introduction made. Mère Fablet had a pinched face and a mole on her chin, and she was not in the habit of loaning candles, she made clear. Feuilly apologised and managed to find a stub in his bag that would at least guide them up the stairs. The stairs were papered up to the third floor; the fourth had a different pattern, much faded, peeling off the walls, and the fifth had paint flaking off the walls. Inside the room, which was indeed rather large and had the promised two windows, neither of which was curtained, the fireplace had a grungy mantle that must have been whitewashed but needed cleaning and a hearth that was dusty but had no recent signs of fire. The walls had more flaking paint, but a quick scrub and a little whitewash were all that seemed needed to make it a far nicer home than Feuilly had ever had. The windows seemed sound enough in their frames, though a quick knock was all Feuilly gave them at that time of night. It was too dark to examine the roof, which did indeed slope toward the windows, but the house had been constructed so that the hall, instead of leading all the way to the opposite house, cut off just at the doors, leaving the last two rooms to directly abut each other at an alcove a couple feet deep. The irregularity added a few feet to the room in such a way as to make the addition seem much more substantial.

"How is this only fifteen a month?" Feuilly stared up at the ceiling, hidden in darkness, wondering when he would discover the hole that must be in the roof.

"Do you look forward to getting furniture up that staircase? There's no privy, Mère Fablet is utterly worthless, as I'm sure you've noticed, and the girl across the hall – not Ada, but her neighbour – got arrested for helping in a robbery, and she led the police on a chase through some of the lower apartments, which doesn't give a house a good name, does it? But fifteen a month! If Mère Fablet ever goes, someone will figure out that to clean this place up would do a hell of a lot for rents. Oh, and there's a drunk on the third floor, don't know if he's still there, but sometimes he passes out on the stairs. I think he lives on the third floor. He never passed out any higher up. Wait until daylight – it looks better and worse when you can see more than a foot in front of your face."

At least the girl thief was gone, and at least one inhabitant of the house was respectable, Feuilly told himself. It would have to do. And why should he expect anything other than a place that was only half-respectable? Half-respectable was a more suitable fit.


	29. Chapter 29

In the light of day, it was easier to see why the room was only costing fifteen francs a month. The roof was intact, but the windows – one a bull's-eye, the other a fine, large, square dormer – did not open. The walls were covered in flaking whitewash over peeling wallpaper. Feuilly felt all around the low ceiling above the windows, into the dormer itself, but there appeared no obvious leaks. Dampness usually would have made bubbles under the paper that would finally burst, but the peeling occurred only at the top of a couple walls, as if the glue had been less thickly applied up there. The overall effect, in the plentiful grey winter light, was profoundly depressing. But Laforêt's presence was something of a comfort – it was hard to concentrate on heavy thoughts with another living being in the room.

Feuilly tried to shake some of the dust from his blanket as he folded it – the first order of business had to be to get a broom and a bucket. "I already tried," he told Laforêt, who was trying to open a window. "And it would be rude to just piss in the courtyard the first morning."

"Bloody hell." He thrust his feet into his boots and took off down the stairs.

"Hey, you got the key?" Feuilly shouted down after him.

"You'll let me back in, right?"

"Bastard," Feuilly muttered. Turning back to the flat, he thought he saw one of the other doors open the slightest crack and rather hoped it was not Laforêt's girl verifying that she had indeed recognised the voice.

Laforêt was back soon enough, though, looking sheepish. "First thing, maybe we need a chamberpot."

"And a bucket. And a broom. I don't think the bull's-eye has any hinges."

"Is the other just painted shut?" He went over to examine the frame himself.

"Just let it alone. It'll be a bigger worry come summer if we're still here." Feuilly had to sit down for a moment – the room was starting to sway a little.

Laforêt wandered up and down, making his own examinations. Feuilly was unsure how many passes he took before asking, "Did you eat yesterday?"

"Yes," Feuilly answered defensively. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Takes a couple days to get used to short rations, that's all."

Laforêt strode the two steps across the hall and knocked. Feuilly, in his utter embarrassment, could easily hear the neighbour girl ask, "What in the hell do you want?"

"Good morning, Ada. It's a pleasure to see you." They must have rowed fiercely, Feuilly thought, from the false cheeriness in Laforêt's voice. "It's not for me; it's for my friend. Have you got anything in there? Wine? Crust of bread? Sip of water? He didn't eat yesterday and I think he's going to pass out."

"I am not going to pass out," Feuilly tried to shout, though the shadows were closing in fast. He closed his eyes. They would pass in a moment, then he could make it down the stairs. What had he eaten the day before? He couldn't remember. Probably only a bit of bread. "I didn't think moving in with you meant I was getting someone's bloody mother," he muttered at the approaching footsteps. Sounds were starting to echo. He took a deep breath. It would pass in a moment.

Then he heard the rustle of a skirt. "Well, let's see what mess you've got yourself, Thierry. Pick yourself up a girl? Oh lord, you're white," the girl suddenly exclaimed. She fell to her knees at Feuilly's side and pressed a cup into his shaking hand. "It's wine. Sip it slowly." The alcohol burned in his empty stomach, but a couple of sips did chase away the shadows so that he could see clearly. The girl was probably their own age, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder in a single plait – Laforêt had likely interrupted her dressing. She could not compare to Sophie in beauty, but she was not unattractive. "I'm called Ada."

Feuilly managed to thank her. "I'm fine. Thank you." Indeed, the shadows were entirely gone, replaced by the expected headache.

"Drink it all, dear. You moved in last night? How do you know Thierry?"

"We worked together."

"Worked. In the past tense." She turned on her former lover. "What happened? Why are you here?" Her questions came out stiffly, each word enunciated in barely controlled anger.

"Cartoux had to close up shop. Made sense to save some money, consolidate households."

"It didn't make sense to move in across the hall from me!"

"For fifteen a month, where else can we get anything half as good?"

"The windows don't open," she told him in the superior tone of one who thinks herself a good judge of quality.

"We figured that out ourselves."

Feuilly made it to his feet. "Thank you, mademoiselle. I'm sorry to have put you to any trouble."

"He can stay," Ada announced to Laforêt. "He has manners. I'm not so certain about you."

"You're not the landlady. Mère Fablet has our month's rent anyway."

Whatever row had parted them, it had neither healed nor entirely broken the attraction. Feuilly knew these rows, the shouting that spilled out into the streets, sometimes ending in the couple making up against the wall of an alley, the woman's screams of rage softened into groans of pleasure. The sort of argument where a stranger was out of place for fear it would end. He found the key on the mantle and slipped it in his pocket. "I'm getting a copy of the key made. Yes, I'll eat something," he added before either of them could mother him again.

The cold, damp air outside chased any lingering shadows away. The shutters were off the shop windows now, and a man was setting up a work table under a hanging lamp. Feuilly took a moment to piss into the gutter before walking over to the market.

The rue Quincampoix was behind the Halle, and that was where Feuilly directed his steps. The fishmongers' auction had just finished, the buyers still carting their wholesale purchases to their stands, when he entered the market. The noise was overwhelming to his aching head, but he could spend a few centimes on an apple or two and a bowl of coffee and wait for a locksmith he knew to open up. Gransard was rarely awake before nine.

"I need a key copied, as soon as possible."

"What do you of all people need a key for?" Gransard was probably the source of the false key Babet intended to use for the jeweler job.

"I'd rather not break into my own damned flat every day."

"So you've got a girl in there now? Congratulations."

Feuilly let him think whatever he liked. "When can I pick up the copy?"

Gransard took an impression in wax and handed back the original key. "Tomorrow?"

"Come on, that's the best you can do for a comrade?"

"I've got jobs in front of you, you know."

"Tonight. I'll come by late. When the cafés close."

"I'll see what I can do."

Laforêt was gone when Feuilly returned to the flat, so he knocked at Ada's door. "He's at the Robillard," she told him before he even had a chance to ask.

"I just wanted to thank you for this morning." With an apologetic smile, he offered her an apple. "I don't usually meet the neighbours through fainting spells."

"Shouldn't you be the one eating this?" But she took it anyway.

"I had a couple already. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Daniel Feuilly."

"Ada Chollet. I should get back to work."

"Of course. I should, too. You wouldn't have a broom I could borrow by any chance, would you?"

She gave him a strange look. "I do." But she handed it too him and closed the door without further comment.

Feuilly shrugged it off. Whatever she must think of him from the events of the morning did not matter. He usually never met his neighbours in any case.

He did catch her watching him some time later, as he pushed his piles of dust toward the open door. "I've never seen a man sweep out his own flat."

"Laforêt lived in abject filth?"

"I never visited his place."

"There's no shame in being able to look out for yourself, if that's what you're implying. The place may be empty for a while, but it doesn't have to look like the underside of a bridge. You've seen a man sweep out a workshop or a café before, haven't you?"

"Of course," she answered defensively. "But you're a little old – or a little young – to be pushing a broom without making an utter hash of it."

"I suppose you don't carry your own water, being a little too old – or a little too young – to stoop to heavy labour."

She flushed. "Point made, monsieur." She disappeared back into her flat after that, leaving Feuilly somewhat disappointed. She obviously thought him effeminate, and he couldn't really blame her after the way he had made her acquaintance, but she had been company of a sort.

Most of the dust brushed out into the hall, he looked again at the windows. Why there was a bulls-eye on the courtyard side made no sense to him, but it did explain why the room was as large as it was – it would have been an invitation to destruction to rent a room in which the only window did not open, and it was too expensive to replace a perfectly whole window with something with cheap hinges that would probably leak. The other was only painted shut, and Feuilly cursed the police for having stolen his knife. What had the previous family done with their slops? he wondered. The walls had certainly not been repainted in months, more likely years. Laforêt could deal with it if he had his own tools, Feuilly decided.

By the time he arrived at the café Robillard, it was busy with local workmen taking a mid-day break. Laforêt introduced him to a thin, gingery man whose name Feuilly promptly forgot. When the gingery man left, Feuilly handed over the key. "I'll pick up the copy late tonight. I'll probably be in after that, but I'll know the actual plan tonight. Oh, and the square window is just painted shut, so if you've anything sharp, you can loosen it yourself. The coppers kept my knife, remember?"

"You're going already? You just got here."

"Need to see about a job, don't I?"

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Yes. I don't need you to mother me," he muttered. "And don't worry, I've got a girl who I think will give me dinner tonight."

"See you tonight, then."

Feuilly had no idea what he was actually doing. Perhaps Laforêt was right, that work came out of the cafés. But he had promised to run down the miniaturist who had insulted Sophie, and he remembered the printer who did the dirty pictures. The printer might have something for him or know of something.

The printer was named Duret. Feuilly was shunted off to one of the journeymen at first, but he kept insisting on speaking to Duret himself. "No, he doesn't know me, but he knows my work! I tell you, we've friends in common."

Duret finally came in. "Who the hell are you?"

Feuilly removed his cap and bowed. "Daniel Feuilly. I bring regards from M. Cartoux."

"What is it?"

"I'm available for work if you need any help."

"And why would I care?"

"The special plates a few months ago?"

"Oh, that was you! Come in back."

With the door closed to the shabby office, Duret was somewhat more friendly. "Those sold well. Worth every sou I paid you. The police have been sniffing around, damn them, so I haven't got anything for you at the moment, but come see me after the new year. I'm told you draw as well?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Bring some sketches then."

"And in the meantime?"

"I don't mix the two sorts of business."

Feuilly thanked him and turned to go.

"Why'd Cartoux let you go?"

"Lost his license. He's selling up what's left, and we're all out of work. I'll see you in a couple of months."

"Wait, come back next week. I'll ask around. What did you apprentice at?"

"Nothing," Feuilly admitted.

"The modern way. Colourist it is then."

Feuilly bid him good day. He had talents – what did it matter that no one had paid a sum for some man to teach him the things he could easily learn on his own? It was not even reasonable to suggest that he had apprenticed to a locksmith, as he had never been taught how to file a blank key. "The modern way", Duret had called it. But Feuilly remembered some of the printer's boys from his youth: they were hooligans who knew how to read, that was all. Boys who knew how to read and had parents willing to pay a fee for their "training", which consisted largely of learning to curse, to brawl, and to look down on the street boys who did not share their intellectual attainments. Because Feuilly could read, he had been permitted to run with them for a time, to mock the various notices posted around the city and jeer the prettiest actresses before they were forcibly removed from the theatres they had managed to sneak into. But he had gone to work soon after, the sort of work where one swept floors and carried buckets and tended fires, where one hid that one could read and deserved better, if only he had had any money in the first place. Five years later, more or less, and he still found himself behind all the rest, now journeymen, who were permitted to set the type and mix the ink and crank the press, tasks that could be taught in an hour. If the rest of the world would simply catch up with the "modern way", perhaps there would be more choices for a literate man of talent.

As it was, the miniaturist turned out to be no exemplar of the literate man of talent. He was fat, of middle age, rather greasy, and he seemed to look at everyone as if he were undressing them. Feuilly did not bother to introduce himself, stating directly, "I heard you were looking for an assistant."

"I'm sorry, no. You must be mistaken." The man did not look confused at all, as an honest man would should someone come to him with an inquiry based on patently false information. An honest man would wonder who was putting about such information, wonder where the inquirer had gotten his information. But this greasy fellow seemed to know the game.

"Mistaken?" Feuilly asked with feigned innocence. "Perhaps the position was already filled. A friend of mine applied for it but wasn't selected. I'd be willing to take my clothes off for five francs a day."

The miniaturist turned beet red. "I think you had better go."

"Gladly. Lechers like you disgust me. And picking on immigrants is even worse." The door would not slam, unfortunately, but Feuilly hoped his exit was theatrical enough without it. It was bad enough to have seen a melodrama play out in real life.


	30. Chapter 30

The sun was setting as Feuilly left the miniaturist's shop. The printer had had nothing, the miniaturist had had nothing, and he had spent money today without earning a sou. The job was going to have to go off soon, within the week, if he were to relax at all. A few more days of this and he would have to get himself a shingle and set up as a public letter writer just to be able to eat. And at the moment, he had so little taste for other people's problems that the very idea of having to take them down as dictation made his skin crawl.

He made his way back through the market, pricing out how much a chipped chamberpot and an old bucket might cost. Had he been thinking more clearly the day before, he might have just stolen the one that technically belonged to his landlady: he could have paid her for it whenever he finally could afford to pay for the mattress the police had ruined. But until the job went off, or some luck finally went his way, he was going to have to make do with the gutter and the fontaine des Innocens, from which he sipped some water as he passed by. There was no point in climbing to the fifth floor for a few minutes in the dark, so he walked up the rue St Denis instead, looking in the shop windows as the lamps were lit against the evening darkness. He went slowly, wasting his time with careful deliberation, examining the street sellers as well as the shop windows, the wagons and carriages as well as the passers-by, forcing a concentration on the visual to distract himself from the calculations – moral and monetary – he had been making all day.

He wound his way along the boulevard Poissonière to the boulevard Montmartre. The Théatre des Variétés was lit for the evening's performances, the crowd straining to get in through the just-opened doors, the single visible poster advertising Odry and Jenny Vertprê in a farce. The nearby cafés were nearly as brightly lit as the theatre itself, showing off the various hues of the female patrons, mixed according to their virtue. Here, Feuilly felt the familiar itch, the wish he had brought his sketchbook to attempt to capture something of the scene. He had not touched pencil or brush since his arrest, and now he distinctly felt the lack. Turning down the rue Richelieu to avoid the bright and happy throngs, he ended up wandering past the Bourse, closed for the day, and only then turned his steps toward the promised meeting with Babet.

He arrived early, in the midst of the dinner hour, when the prostitutes of the neighbourhood were filling their stomachs before the long cold evening, and the few men who pretended to honesty were drowning their workday with sour wine. Viv was dropping plates on every table, stopping to inform a man that bread did not grow on trees and if he wanted more, it cost another sou. Feuilly hung back in the doorway, the smell of grease making his stomach grumble, uncertain if he should leave rather than make the mistake of being seen by others who knew him. But Viv saw him and smiled, and as soon as her hands were free, she came directly up to him.

"If it weren't for my father, I'd pull you into the kitchen. Stay at the counter for a bit; when Père Sabret leaves, you'll have a table to yourself."

He could hardly tell her no, so he stood at the counter, nursing a glass of wine, until the coin forger had finished his dinner. No one bothered him, but it was not yet seven o'clock; his crowd dined late, if they dined at all, and drank until the legal closing time. The wine landed hard in his too-empty stomach, going to his head by the time Viv led him to a small table near the door to the kitchen. She took him by the arm and did not let go until she had to disappear back into the kitchen, though she reappeared almost immediately with a lump of bread and a bowl of watery soup.

"To start. I'll get you a better dinner than this lot is getting as soon as I have a moment."

He grabbed her hand as she was about to leave again. "I can't pay."

"You know I don't want your money."

The bread was stale, but soaked in the soup, it was hot and filled what had been an aching void. He was still hungry, and glad there was more to come, when he had finished it, but at least he felt a stronger urge to look around after his bowl was empty. The tavern was starting to clear out, the diners headed home to rest or out for better entertainments, the women adjusting their bodices as they left to better advertise the goods on offer.

Viv returned with two plates, then quickly disappeared behind the counter to appropriate a pitcher of wine and another glass. "There. If you don't mind that I join you. I don't like to think of you as one of the sad ones eating alone."

"I'd very much like your company."

"Good." As they ate, she chatted a bit about how things had gone in the neighbourhood since he left. But she made no mention of Lydie's name, and Feuilly was rather relieved by the omission. In encouraging Lydie's jealousy for Viv, when it should more accurately have been directed at Sophie, he had behaved very badly. It was not an hour he wished to live over again. Eventually, as plates of meat and vegetables and more potatoes than anything else disappeared, Viv finally said, "You don't have to tell me what happened if you don't want to. But I am sorry for whatever it was. I miss you like anything, but that didn't mean I wanted to see you back here."

He took her hand across the table, even as he knew it was more the action of a lover than a friend, because he was so glad to hear that sort of sympathy from her. "The short version is my employer lost his license and couldn't even pay our final week's salaries. The long version involves a tale I'm sure you've heard from most of the clientele in this place."

She squeezed his hand. "The police are bastards to everyone, I guess. You don't have to tell me that."

But the entire story spilled out – the arrest, Aleçon, the Poles, the more than two weeks stuck in the depot. "Babet must have done something to get me out, so I owe him."

"At least you've still got your girl."

"She isn't my girl, and she can't be as long as I owe Babet anything."

"What will you do?"

"I'm staying with a friend for now. I work off what I owe Babet, but I keep looking for a real job. Maybe it won't all have turned out a waste."

"Good. Something will turn up. Something turned up last time, after all, and you're so much better prepared now, right? It'll work out."

"At least someone believes that."

"You don't?"

He sighed. "I don't know. It's so easy to just come back, you know? I have missed you."

"Really?" She looked as if she were trying not to believe him.

"Really. You're the only one I've missed."

"I can't be rescued. The business is what it is."

"I know. But I wish it were otherwise. For both of us."

"How long do you think you'll have to stay?"

He shrugged. "Three jobs, maybe? Seems fair. I have until the end of the year before my friend starts asking questions."

"So I get you until the end of the year."

"That's about the long and short of it."

The creak of the kitchen door caused her to let go of his hand just before her father was able to poke his head around. "Are you working or tricking?" he asked angrily.

"I'm eating my dinner," she answered defensively, her expression turning dark. Banging the plates together as she gathered them up, she started muttering curses under her breath. "You come back for one evening, and it's like the past five months never happened. Don't worry about him," she insisted. "I know damned well you're probably the last gent in here who could ruin me. Probably the only reason he hates you."

"He's never liked me. Not even when I was a kid."

"Doesn't help you grew up like this." She looked away, but Feuilly could still see her blush. "You can hang around as long as you like." But she disappeared into the kitchen.

He found a newspaper to hide behind until Babet came in. It was very nice to see Viv, and to have her sympathy and goodwill, but he felt he should be at Pan Chrzyszczewski's flat of an evening, not back here in a filthy tavern waiting for the word on an illegal plot. A poor Jew in a flat – hardly the sort of job that one justified as a natural redistribution of wealth. Jews should be doing better than flats, after all, so this one, unless he were the greatest miser of his race, could not be much worth the effort. But it was going to be done, with or without him, so at least his portion might remain the protection of this Miriam or Esther who was not bad looking.

But soon enough, he realised that the three-day-old copy of the _Journal des Débats_ included a lengthy article on Girodet's contributions to the Salon. He was busy rolling his eyes over the praise of the Vendéen portraits, yet dying to see which they were so he might publicly do the same over the subjects even if they exhibited such technical skill, when Gueulemer made his presence known by a sharp yank of Feuilly's hair.

Feuilly swung around for a look at his attacker, but Gueulemer just said, "Haven't you been in trouble over politics enough already?"

He set aside the newspaper, since it was just praising Cathelineau and Bonchamps as much as it was praising Girodet, and followed Gueulemer to their preferred table in the back. "I wasn't reading about politics," he said. "I was reading about art."

"That's even worse," the big man said. "What kind of sissy did you turn into while I was sick?"

Feuilly made a rude gesture in response and left it at that. He saw Babet out of the corner of his eye, making quickly for their dim corner. "What's the word?" he asked when Babet drew near.

"Sunday night."

"So I've got two days, three if we count Sunday itself. What time and what do you know?"

The plan was that the jeweler was expected to be out that evening. Feuilly's task was to keep the neighbour, a girl called Gabrielle Mirès, away from the building between eight and eleven. "I don't care what you do with her; just keep her out of the way."

"Do Jews go to the theatre or the dance halls?"

"How do I know?"

"If she were ordinary, this would be easy," Feuilly complained. "Would a Jew girl even look twice at me?" Would an ordinary Catholic girl look twice at him was also a reasonable question, he feared.

"That's going to have to be up to you. You'll meet me at ten tomorrow morning so I can point her out to you," Babet informed him. "She does her marketing at the marché Saint Jean every morning at ten."

"How much of a cut do I get for playing decoy?"

"Twenty percent."

"And how much is everyone else getting?"

"Gueulemer and I are on the inside, so we split the rest."

"Come off it. You're getting in somehow, you got tipped somehow, so you must be paying the concierge a reasonable fee. I won't be inside to see what the take is, so I'm getting fucked, right? Just tell me the damned truth. I owe you my entire share, anyway, in all likelihood."

Babet and Gueulemer exchanged a look. "We don't know how much the take will be," Gueulemer admitted. "The concierge gets a third; we split the rest after that."

"That I can accept. Thank you for not being as dumb as you look."

Feuilly endured their company for some time longer – he had to put up a reasonable façade of interest, and he could not pick up his key from Gransard until closing time, which meant he couldn't guarantee getting into the flat until then. There was nowhere else he could go without paying for a glass of wine, anyway, so he stayed put, half-listening to conversation he did not much care to follow.

When at last he left, the November wind seemed to cut through him like ice. It had not been so cold earlier in the evening, and it was a chore to wend his way back to the Innocens, to see if Gransard had managed to complete the key. He knew full well that any business ahead of his was for shadier purposes than a shared flat, and shady was always worth more than legitimate. He couldn't begrudge the man a living.

He could, however, begrudge whatever kept Gransard from answering his knock right away, leaving him shivering on the street even as he could see the light through a chink in the shutter. Eventually, a man Feuilly thought might be Barrecarrosse emerged, and Feuilly could push his way inside, rubbing his hands to bring the feeling back into his stiff fingers. "Do you have it?"

Gransard named the price, and Feuilly counted it carefully from his remaining coin. "You can pay me later if you need to," the locksmith offered.

"I'm already in debt to Babet, and that's enough, thank you."

"That I can understand." But he did push a sou back to Feuilly. "It doesn't take as long with a good impression."

Coming up the stairs as quietly as possible, as was his habit, Feuilly could hear voices once he reached the fourth-floor landing. Skipping the step that creaked, he paused just out of sight.

"I told you, we worked together."

"What was he before that?" A pause – Laforêt couldn't answer. "Ha!"

"Look, I know he looks like a fancy boy, but it isn't my business. He got me out of a hell of a scrape, and I owe him for that, at least. He's not a bad chap."

"What kind of a scrape?"

"You remember Aleçon at all? He ended up getting us all arrested because he thought it would be a good idea to play a prank on the king."

"Now you're lying."

"I don't know what he did, but I know we were more than two weeks in the police depot over something he was guilty of and the inspector liked to call treason. I don't know what I would have done without Feuilly there."

"So he's comfortable being in jail."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it! He kept me from being stupid, that's all. I owe him."

"Don't let him take it in trade."

"Why would you say a thing like that? He chased off a nance who spent a night in the depot, I'll have you know."

"Well, that proves it, doesn't it?"

"Proves what?"

"He is a fancy boy, otherwise why else would someone try to pick him up?"

"He's not a fancy boy. Besides, what's it to you if he was? Or do you think that only because he hasn't flirted with you?"

"Not everyone in the world needs to flirt with me, Thierry. I care because it ain't right. Where is he right now?"

"He has business in the evenings." Laforêt sounded abashed.

"Ha!"

"He told me he's not a fancy boy. I believe him. That's all I need to know."

"Then what other kind of business could he have in the evenings?"

"It's his business," he tried to insist. "Not yours and not mine."

"You have no sense of judgment."

"You're right. How long were we together?"

"Go to hell. And keep your arse turned away from your flatmate." A door closed, followed by another door.

Feuilly settled back on the stairs. So Ada was convinced he was one of the poofs of the Tuileries and the rue de Rivoli. So be it; what did it matter to him if the neighbour thought he didn't like girls? But Laforêt wasn't a fool – neither was Ada, for that matter – and it was patently obvious that if he did not trade in sex, there was only one other answer for the business that would keep him away in the evenings. He had been the fool, to think that he could count on silence when his very presence and absence marked the nature of his trade. Laforêt knew – how could he not know? – but he had said nothing to Ada, had even insulted her in order to shut down the conversation. Hogu had made everything too obvious; Feuilly had known that from the beginning.

What was to be done? The money had already been spent. He had six weeks to extricate himself from one of these situations – or both of these situations. He should never have dragged Laforêt into his own mess. But then, Laforêt knew, had to have known ever since he saw Hogu and drank the wine Babet's money had bought. And knowing, he had made the offer. Feuilly owed Babet, and Laforêt owed him. Feuilly despised owing Babet, but his honour would permit nothing less than a full repayment in work. Laforêt, too, had given in to the dictates of honour, it appeared. Feuilly could not decide if it had been saintly or stupid, but the man had not entered the agreement with his eyes closed.

He stepped hard on the squeaky stair, announcing his presence. He jiggled the key in the lock, as well, for fair warning. Ignoring Laforêt's questioning look, he said, "Damn, it's getting cold out there."

"I broke the seal on the window. And I got a pot. I'll get a bucket as soon as I get some cash."

"For an easy split, I should be the one to get the bucket."

Laforêt shook his head. "I owe you."

Feuilly rolled up in his blanket, thinking it better to feign sleep than deal with any fallout from the argument with Ada. "You're a man of honour."


	31. Chapter 31

What on earth was the point of all this? Feuilly asked himself. Did Jewish girls even talk to Catholic boys? They apparently shopped in the same markets, but there was no Jewish market. Yet there were Jewish bakeries and cafés and pastry shops and butchers. They had their own lives, centred on the rue des Rosiers, where sometimes the interested Frenchman could see bearded men in shawls walking to and from the synagogue in the rue St-Avoie.

Babet met him at the edge of the marché St Jean, next to a fruiterer and across from a cheesemonger. "Why me?" Feuilly demanded again. "You need a confidence man for this."

"You might as well be one, the attention Vivienne gives you." Feuilly flushed – Viv notoriously attached herself to the confidence tricksters, and apparently her similar feeling for Feuilly had become obvious. "How else do we get her out of the way, genius? You know you're in – you even dressed the part."

Feuilly had, indeed, put on his Sunday coat and hat, having decided that the only way to get near her, if she were indeed as good-looking as Jewesses were said to be, was to pretend to be something other than an unemployed workman. No young woman, Christian or Jew, would listen to a young man in a cap and jacket at a time of day he ought to have been at work. Laforêt had looked at him with suspicion when he left the flat that morning, but he had kept his promise not to ask questions. "I'm in, all right, but that doesn't mean I like the job."

"Here she comes. Grey dress, black shawl, white cap. Jew nose, sad to say."

The Semitic nose was unfortunate – she would have been very pretty otherwise. A basket in hand, she stepped deliberately over to the cheesemonger.

"Do I see you Sunday night or Monday night?"

"Monday, usual place."

Feuilly answered with only a tip of his hat and stepped into the market crowd. Mlle Mirès was haggling with the cheesemonger, which gave Feuilly some time to study her more carefully. She was much older than he had expected, a couple years above Sophie perhaps, with black hair and dark eyes and olive skin. Mirès was a Spanish name, or possibly Portuguese – the Iberian Jews were the most normal, he remembered, unlike the Eastern ones whose men were bearded and wore shawls in the street. Perhaps, then, it was only the Eastern Jews who married early and were ruined by the time they reached the age of Mlle Mirès. She was not so well-dressed as Sophie, however: her dress was faded in the creases and looked thin at the elbows. While the Jews on the whole could probably stand to lose some money, she and any neighbour of hers were certainly as poor as Feuilly himself was. Her fingers betrayed the calluses of needlework: she was a Jew, but in every other respect, she was a grisette like most other girls in Paris. Yet even as he thought he had better give the whole thing up, since she was just a worn-out grisette, the tiredness in her eyes attracted him. His initial plan had been to claim himself an artist and beg her to sit for a Judith, since what else did one do with a Jewess, but she had a weary sadness more appropriate to Ruth, gleaning during the day and mourning the loss of her husband and her country at night.

She moved on to one of the vegetable sellers, asking the price of potatoes. Ruth, indeed. It was not so flattering a subject as Judith, but the more he contemplated the idea, the more apt it seemed. Such a painting would have more of Géricault's truth than of Girodet's hollow beauty.

Feuilly managed to step ahead of her so that by careful movement through the crowd, she might bump into him. It was a move he knew well in theory from the pickpockets but in which he was entirely unpractised. He took the necessary force a bit too far and knocked the basket out of her hand entirely, her four potatoes spilling onto the ground but the cheese, its cloth wrap caught in the flaking rushes of the basket, luckily safe. "Please forgive me, mademoiselle," he apologized, bending to help her pick up the spilled produce. Their hands met as he reached for the same potato as she, and only then did she meet his eyes. And snatched her hand away, muttering an apology. Jewish girls apparently did not talk to Catholic men. The whole thing would end in disaster if that were the case. What had Babet been thinking? They kept to themselves for a reason.

Still, he offered her the potato. "It is entirely my fault, I assure you. And I must confess, I am more pleased than perhaps I should be in such an encounter. One does not see women of your beauty every day."

She glared at him and began to stalk off. He had to follow quickly. Chasing after an unwilling woman was not at all to his taste. "I must seem terribly fast, mademoiselle, which wasn't my intent at all. Has anyone ever told you that you are a perfect embodiment of Ruth?" he managed to spit out

She stopped and turned around at that, even if only to glare at him again. "What is it you want?" she asked, ill-tempered and tired and hardly willing to give herself over to Boaz.

"I am an artist, mademoiselle," he tried to explain quickly, "working on a painting of Ruth, and I think you would be the most perfect model I could find."

"You do recall Ruth wasn't a Jew, don't you?" Her speech was overlaid not with the Germanic accent one heard from stage Jews but with a lilting southern hesitation. She was certainly one of the Spanish Jews, and perhaps her annoyance at him from the beginning was due less to her race than to her position as an unaccompanied woman in the marketplace. She had asked him two questions, now, after all.

"She was a convert, yes, I know, but aren't you tired of all the pale, blonde women who are supposed to stand in for your ancestors?" It had just spilled out, but the smallest change in her stance suggested that she was actually listening. "I think there should be truth in art, that truth has its own beauty, and that means that Judith should be a Jew and Ruth should not be blonde and a corpse should be painted from a corpse, not from a living man lying in a neatly arranged manner. And I would very much like to make a painting of Ruth, with you as the model."

"I'm not that sort of girl," she argued.

"At least you haven't got a mother-in-law pushing you to be that sort of girl. Have you?" She didn't answer, but neither did she walk away. "I'm innocent, I swear," he pleaded. "I just want to make a few sketches by candlelight. I'm not suggesting in the least that I play the role of Boaz; but who else will give me that moment full of doubt when she enters his chamber?" If her defensive stance could soften at all, she would indeed be perfect, he thought.

"Why Ruth?"

He simply told the truth. "I was contemplating a Judith, and then I saw you."

She laughed, harsh and skeptical. "You almost had me there. I'll tell you again, monsieur, I'm not that kind of girl."

"What kind of girl?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

"I know what everyone else means. I want to know what you mean."

"Very well. I do not appreciate being considered the sort of person who would take her clothes off for a stranger. I may be a Jew, but I've a long way to go before I could come to that, no matter what you think of us."

"You cannot talk me out of it if you continue to talk in this manner. The more you say, the more fit for the role I think you."

She paused, as if to think it out for herself, and then hid her face in her hand at the conclusion she had reached. "You make a reasoned point, monsieur. Nevertheless, I cannot trust you, and I will not put myself into a position where others will think ill of me."

Feuilly was starting to actively like her – she had followed his train of thought, and her modesty was not so great that she had fled rather than try to set him right. He had to protect her from being caught up in the plot. "How could I prove to you that you have nothing to fear from me? Perhaps the sketches will go badly and the painting will never be done, so that none of your acquaintance would ever see the fruits of our work."

"Then what would be the point of the work, if there is no result? Please forgive me, monsieur. I have work of my own. I must go."

"Will you at least think it over? Give me an answer tomorrow?"

"I shan't be here tomorrow, on account of the Sabbath."

"Sunday, then?" He could work something out by then, perhaps. So long as he could find a way to keep her out of her flat all evening, she would be safe and he would have fulfilled his duty.

"How much would you pay?"

"I cannot pay," he admitted, then added with sudden inspiration, "and should not that convince you of my virtue? How could I lure you into degradation without the promise of a high fee? The men who wish only to prey on beautiful women always offer money." He had learned that much, at least, from the greasy miniaturist. "But I will promise you, that if the painting ever has a buyer, I shall share the proceeds with you. After all, I should be working on a Judith had I never met you. Look, my name is Daniel Feuilly, I'm doing my damnedest to get started in this city, and you know you want to help me make art that doesn't make you cringe. Your people got a raw deal with the Restoration, I know that much, and I think someone's face ought to be rubbed in it. Don't you want to help me with that?" The political statement had just popped out, surprising even himself. The Jews had gotten a raw deal – under the Empire, they had been made citizens, equal to all Christians, but the restored monarchy had kept its promises only to the Protestants, keeping the Jews from the professions they had barely begun to join with the Emperor's blessing. Whether or not promises should have been made in the first place, the monarchy's refusal to uphold the bargain it inherited did not seem fair play.

"I shall think about it, M. Feuilly," she said at last. "Perhaps I shall see you on Sunday."

"Can I at least know your name?" he remembered to ask. If she would introduce herself, he would not have to worry that he might let his prior knowledge slip out and ruin the whole plot.

She hesitated, as if it required deliberation to give her name when she had already nearly promised to see him on Sunday. "Gabrielle Mirès."

"Then I shall hope to see you Sunday morning, Mlle Mirès."

"Madame," she corrected, to his horror. Babet had said nothing about a husband. Their information was rubbish. They had the wrong woman. They must have the wrong woman, since she was not fat or dry, did not have children hanging off her, was obviously buying food only for herself – she had none of the ruin marriage was said to bring to the beautiful Jew, nor was she feeding a husband if her paltry marketing was to last her two days rather than one. The whole thing was madness if there was a husband. How could they not have known and warned him?

Feuilly did his best to hide his surprise, but he feared it was obvious, his voice strained. "Of course, you shall have to talk it over with your husband."

"Perhaps I should, though not in the manner you imply. He's been dead for more than a year."

He breathed out, the relief flooding his veins. "Please forgive me. The subject of my painting must have given you a terrible shock."

"Good day, M. Feuilly." She turned away again, and this time he let her go. He had just forced himself on a woman, claiming to be something he was not, while what she was had been so obvious he had accepted it without understanding. The young Jewish widow, in a foreign city, in the guise of Ruth – yes, there was truth there, but too much truth. Art was not supposed to be an exact depiction of the world but an interpretation of the world.

And worse, suppose on Sunday she did say yes? He would have to get rid of Laforêt, obtain some furniture, buy candles, prepare their room as if it were an artist's studio, as if his medium were oils rather than watercolours. The confidence man would merely run a few swindles and buy up what he needed, or convince a shop to give him credit then abandon the goods and the identity once he had what he needed. But Feuilly barely believed he had pulled off an introduction to the woman, much less convinced her that he was what he said he was. He had no confidence in himself, so how could he engender it in others?

Yet, if she called the whole thing off, she would likely spend Sunday night in her room. A poor widow, barely earning her keep, caught up in the middle of a robbery by men who would not hesitate to slit her throat rather than risk her as a witness. They preferred to have no witnesses, of course, which is why Feuilly had been thrown at her, but if he failed, her presence might secure her death. And her death would cause the police to take a greater interest in the case, might turn the bought-off concierge against the thieves, would lead to another death, this one in the place de Grève. Feuilly's honour required the protection of all parties from each other. Leave the poor jeweler to the help of heaven, if God still cared anything for the Jews, he concluded.

He went to Jacquemont, the pawnbroker, in the hope of borrowing a few pieces. At the very least, he was going to need some canvases, an easel, and some small tables and a place for her to sit. As he walked through the crowded streets, he wished he had learned the art of picking pockets, at least for the moment. He was also going to need proper sketching supplies, for which he would have to pay cash. Good paper was not as cheap as extra pencils.

The pawnbroker was amenable to the loan, but it extended only to a chair and a couple of small tables. "I expect them back on Monday without a scratch. Scratches are five sous each, got it?" It took two trips to carry them back to the flat himself, and he had no idea how he was going to explain their presence to Laforêt. But he found that he was looking forward to it, even if the circumstances were less than ideal. What better way to spend an evening than sketching a pretty girl, pretending that something brilliant could be made from such humble beginnings? No false historicism, he had already decided; Mme Mirès' faded dress was the perfect emblem for Ruth. The artists of previous centuries had dressed their Biblical figures as if they were modern locals, so why should he not do the same? It would rebuke Ingres and David for all time if it were successful. And if it were not a success, it could simply be retitled "The Fallen Woman" or something of that nature.

Yet to hope that the evening would succeed was to hope that it succeeded on all fronts, that the jeweler's cache would repay all the participants in the plot at a rate that would enable Feuilly to take home something more than the satisfaction of having done his duty. Money was spent, and though he would enjoy the use of the sketch paper and pencils for some time, a mere two days after he was suspected of nearly passing out from hunger was hardly the time for such expenditures.

Indeed, when Laforêt returned to the flat that evening, his exclamation of "Furniture!" was almost painful to Feuilly.

"It's only on loan for a couple of days. I may have a girl coming up here on Sunday night."

"Shouldn't you have gotten a bed?" Laforêt asked. "Sorry, not an actual question!"

"It's not that sort of a job," Feuilly explained.

"I'll clear out, nothing to worry about."

"What you think -"

"I don't think," Laforêt insisted. "I don't need to know, so I'm not going to know. But you are looking for work, aren't you?"

"A printer I know is making some inquiries on my behalf. He may have something as soon as next week."

"Fingers crossed for you."

It was all very well that Duret might have something for him; he had to get through Sunday first. Saturday was spent attempting to set the rest of the scene, until that night, Laforêt, coming back from a job he did not explain but that had left him covered in sawdust, nearly dragged Feuilly out to a café.

"I can't take it. I have to see you among men before Ada gets the wrong idea again."

"Again?" Feuilly asked innocently.

"You haven't lied to me, have you? I mean, it isn't really my business if you have, just as it isn't really my business what you do, even if you are using our flat for God only knows what tomorrow night, but if it's going to end up with the police taking an interest again . . ." he trailed off.

"Do you want to know?"

"I don't know," Laforêt admitted.

"It shouldn't involve the cops. Can I ask what you were up to today?"

"Scraping floors so they can get refinished on Monday," he answered tiredly. "You take your twenty sous where you can get them, right?"

"Right." Feuilly was hoping more for twenty francs, at the very least, for his night's work, but the same sentiment applied. It may be beneath you, but at least it's a living.


	32. Chapter 32

Mme Mirès was at the market again, just as Feuilly had expected. She seemed not to have expected him to actually turn up, however. "Look, monsieur, I have work to do."

"I know, and I don't intend to keep you. I'd want to do the sketches by candlelight, anyway, to get the shadows right. You're a seamstress, aren't you? How much do you really get done after dark?"

"It is none of your business." She tried to turn back to selecting vegetables.

"Please, madame? A couple hours tonight. That's all I'm asking."

"I've already told you that I am not that sort of girl."

"Is there anything I can do to convince you that my intentions are honest?"

She turned to address him directly, her expression annoyed. "No. You see, monsieur, like Ruth, I have a mother-in-law. Unlike Ruth, I also have a father-in-law. This mother-in-law is a gossip who hates that I have chosen to live on my own rather than fall under her roof. I agreed to marry my husband, not her. Our previous conversation was already reported back to her. I will not ruin my reputation for a project that, as you say, may never come off. Are your intentions honest? It doesn't matter. You can be as honest as the day, but what will that mean for my character? A woman who hopes to remarry cannot sit modeling for an artist, particularly if he is a Christian!"

"If it were not for your late husband's family, you would sit for me." She exhaled sharply and tried to move on, but he grabbed her by the arm. This simply had to come off, for her own sake as well as his. He noticed that she did not wrench her arm from his grasp. "Please, madame, at least consider it. Tell me where you live; I'll come for you at half-past seven. If they are going to talk, then shall we not at least try to have something better than mere gossip come of it?" When it seemed that whole minutes must have gone by without an answer, with everyone in the market staring at them, he begged, "I'll take you to the theatre as a pledge of good faith. To prove I'm not a heel."

"Yes, to prove that you took me to the theatre before you took me to bed," she answered at last. "Monsieur, where are you from?"

"Alençon," he lied easily.

"This is Paris. You're a Christian. I'm a Jew. The only relations we could have are the sort I do not intend to have."

"Not every artist's model is a whore," Feuilly tried to argue.

"But they are. They trade beauty for money, and never do they end up like Esther, able to repay their people."

He tried again. "But if you can't do as you like in Paris, where can you?"

"You can do as you like in Paris because you are a man and a stranger. I live here. The same customs that bind you in Alençon bind me here. That I even have to explain that to you proves you too much a child to understand the power of society."

"I do understand. I'll tell you something. There's this girl I know, beautiful girl, talented, sweet, likes me in some way. I'm more than half in love with her. But I'm allowed to sit with her in the kitchen because her father looks on me as some sort of family servant. And I'm terrified that one day, he'll figure it out, and I'll be banished. So I'm very, very careful, whenever I'm with her, even as I want nothing more than to fall on my knees and kiss her hand and swear to love her the rest of my life. But I'd never do it, because she'd be appalled that I'd dare feel such a thing, because affection can only travel from master to servant, not from servant to master. I know society."

"You may be a decent boy, but the fact remains, you do no good to my reputation."

"And the art means nothing to you?"

"You will have the same effect with any dark-haired girl." Her tone had suddenly changed, become more final, as if she were at last determined to bid him good day. The whole thing was about to fall apart, and Feuilly had no idea how to keep it together. She had to stay out tonight, for her own good. What good would her reputation be if she ended up in the middle of the whole thing? What good would his reputation be if he failed at this one task?

"But where will I find one who looks like you? Where will I find one who understands what it is I want to do?"

"When you suggest that a painting of a Biblical subject will somehow be on behalf of the Jews, do you actually know what you are saying?"

"Would you like to explain it to me tonight?"

She shook her head and walked away. He followed quickly. "Please, madame, I am sorry if I have offended you."

"Offended me! The first person in a year and a half to tell me I was pretty? You've made a fool of yourself, and of me, but I was flattered, though I know well I should not have been. And now I've given you far more time than you've deserved, and I will have to defend myself, and what will have been the point of it all?"

"There will have been no point if you do not sit for me. Please, madame. I will treat you with every courtesy."

"As if I were your beloved?"

"Yes," he vowed. He had not been instructed to use her, merely to keep her out of the way. He would treat her with the same courtesy he had always treated Sophie, the same deference to her elevated social state. She was an honest widow, and that made her better than he was at this moment, even if she were a Jew. "Shall I see you tonight, madame?"

"Why do you not give me your address?"

"91 rue Quincampoix," he replied. It would be easier this way, if she were willing to venture alone out of the Jewish quarter. "Behind the Marché des Innocents. The ground floor houses a moroccan leather worker; I've a room on the fifth."

"I shall consider the offer, monsieur."

"Please say you'll come." He tried to give her his most charming smile.

"I shall consider it. Good day, monsieur."

He had to leave it there. What if she did not come? But then, if he continued to press, she certainly would not come.

And she did not come. The bells of St Merry tolled eight o'clock, and there was no sign of her. Feuilly ran down the stairs to ask Mère Fablet if anyone had been looking for him, but she was as clueless as always. "If a woman comes for me, I will be right back."

A drizzle had set in, making it cold and miserable to walk through the dark streets as he hurried along, scanning every face in the light of the cafés of the rues Aubry le Boucher and Nouveau St Merry, hoping he might run into her. He could not go so far as the rue des Rosiers without blowing his cover, but he could at least pass into the Jewish quarter itself. But what would be the good in finding her in the streets? He would look panicked. She would know something was up. Perhaps she had merely taken a wrong turn and was even now asking Mère Fablet for him. He walked up the rue St Avoie a short distance, to a Jewish pastry shop that was still open, to give himself an excuse for his absence should she turn up. The man at the counter gave him a strange look, as if Christians rarely gave him their custom, but he wrapped two apple tarts in paper and handed them over.

Holding them under his coat, he made his way back to the house, hoping that she would be waiting there. But she was not. "No one's come," Mère Fablet insisted.

"If a Mme Mirès comes, please let her come up."

Mère Fablet merely grumbled, but Feuilly was certain that anyone who came looking for him would be sent upstairs without question.

The bells tolled nine o'clock. He sat in the borrowed chair, head in his hands. He had failed utterly. She would not come. He could not go for her without risking all, yet if he did not go for her, he would never stop wondering what had become of her.

He went back out in the streets, the puddles now shining with reflected light. The streets were busy, it being a Sunday evening, the cafés full of people, even as the shops were shuttered. Where could he go? He ended up pausing again at the corner of the rue St Avoie, people pushing past him in the rain as he stood like a fool, uncertain if he should move ahead or go back. He had failed. His failure might lead to their failure. He had ruined the job, he who had never ruined a job. But never had they sent him to do the work of a confidence man. He was a lockpick, that was all. It was all he had trained for. He might be able to produce some forged documents, but that was the extent of his training and his talents.

The problem was them, he decided, as he stood in the rain. They believed everyone was self-serving in the same way. They had never understood him, so how could they understand that a decent-looking girl would not be willing to throw herself into the arms of a decent-looking young man? Their reputations hinged on acting as far outside the bounds of decency as possible, and they believed that anyone else would as well, were he given the opportunity. But there were consequences out here in the real world. And they must fall even harder on a Jew, he thought. Rather like the Greeks, really. There were so few of them in comparison, they were in the thrall of the powerful who were not like them at all, so they had to stick together, had to be better than the race who had power over them, otherwise they would be split apart and butchered. Or, perhaps more accurately with the Jews, had the Portuguese and Spanish converts been trusted by the Portuguese and Spaniards, they might have stayed Christian and not come to France and returned to their old beliefs. If they had the same rights and were treated equally by the Christians, perhaps they would all eventually convert and cease to exist. So they had to stick together, to not trust the Christians, if they were to exist as a separate race. Like the Greeks, who could convert and join the Turks and enjoy all the benefits and leave their oppression behind, or like the Poles, who could throw in their lot with the Russians, as many of the lords had done, and continue to enjoy their privileges while their unacknowledged countrymen languished in despair. Only the Jews had no country anymore. Sophie could never dare to fall in love with him, not because he was a poor criminal, but because as a Pole in exile, she must stick with her own people or Poland would be lost. Mme Mirès could not put herself in a position to want to see him again because she would be cast out by her own people, fearful of what might happen to the race as a whole should one woman sleep with a Christian. Babet had no concern for the collective; not even the honourable ways he had taught Feuilly were based in any concern for the collective. One did not rat out anyone else because it would always come back around to injure the rat. For Babet, the honour was incidental.

For her honour, Mme Mirès could not come to him. For his honour, he could not explain to her why she must, at the very least, find somewhere other than her flat to spend her evening. They were both doomed because Babet did not understand that it would take more than two days for a woman to trust a man enough to go to his flat. It would take far longer when that woman was determined to act honourably against the beliefs commonly held against her race.

Feuilly turned around and walked back to his flat. So much money spent, favours obtained, to absolutely no profit. What could he do now? Babet would be furious. Gueulemer was hardly Brujon – there would be no correction or protection there. Who else could they have used? Barrecarrosse? Demi-Liard? Impossible. If they did not take in a confidence man, then they needed to avoid jobs in which a confidence man was necessary. But logic of that sort was little good against the possibility of a take measured in the hundreds of francs to each participant. How could one get less from a jeweler, even if he did have only a room opposite Mme Mirès? He was a Jew, after all – perhaps his little room was evidence of the natural miserliness of his race. What was Feuilly to do?

Turning back down the rue Quincampoix, he noted that one of the doors was open, the light spilling into the narrow street. As he approached, he realised it was his own building. It closed at last before he reached it, but, his eyes dazzled from focusing on the light, he bumped directly into a passerby. "Pardon me, mademoiselle."

"M. Feuilly?"

"You came! I'm sorry. I went to look for you. But of course you didn't want me to look for you. Then I realised I didn't even know where to look for you." He forced himself to stop rambling. She was alive, she was here, perhaps they were going in later than he had feared, perhaps they were waiting for her to leave before going in, it didn't matter. She was here, and the plan would come off. He would never agree to play decoy again. "Please come in."

She followed him up the stairs, her expression impossible to see in the dark. "I'm sorry I'm late," she at last apologised as they reached the top floor.

"I asked a difficult thing and did not give you enough time to think it over. I'm the one who is sorry."

"But you were also right. If they are going to talk, then it should be about something. I might at least sin if I'm going to take all the consequences for it."

He fumbled with the key in his nervousness. As he managed to get his door open, the door across the hall opened. "Up, down, up, down, all evening, then I heard voices."

"Do you spy on all the neighbours," Feuilly asked Ada, "or just me? Madame, allow me to introduce Mlle Chollet, my neighbour."

"Thierry said you were working tonight," Ada told him, her voice full of suspicion.

"I am. Mme Mirès has agreed to sit for me. Would you like to watch?" She slammed the door shut rather than answer. Did she think he meant she was permitted to watch him have sex with the woman? he briefly wondered. But with a shrug, he gestured for Mme Mirès to follow him into the room. "I moved in only a few days ago. She doesn't like me because the friend I share it with used, how shall I say, to be intimately acquainted with her."

"He should not have taken this room, then."

"No, but how could I turn down those windows?" He lit the other candles he had prepared. "I can leave the door open, if you like. Would that prove my intentions honourable?"

"The offer proves your intentions just what you have said they were. But I should prefer it."

"Of course. I understand it must be difficult for you. Your people have to stick together if they are to survive as a race. I make it look as if you would rather assimilate with the oppressors."

She gave him a curious look, but at last she smiled. "Yes. But is that not what you want, that the Jews no longer exist?"

"No. I want all peoples to exist. You're like the Greeks or the Poles – you would do better to give in, except to give in would be to lose your soul. And if the Jews have survived a thousand years without a country, then the Greeks will survive, no matter how long the war takes, and the Poles will survive, even if all their high nobles give in to the Russians and the Austrians. You should be the model for the oppressed peoples everywhere to preserve what makes them unique."

"So instead of painting Greeks, you are painting Jews, and insisting the meaning is the same."

"Isn't it?"

"If you say it is. I'm just a woman. You know what it means for your people. What is it you want me to do?"

"Well, I had thought, Ruth entering Boaz's chamber, so if we assume the door is the door, and the blankets over there are Boaz asleep, you would be coming in with a candle or a lantern or something, and pause a moment to contemplate just what it is that you are about to do."

She picked up a candle and looked around for a moment before taking a stiff, overdone posture that looked more like a Madonna confronted by the archangel. "Like this?"

"No. This isn't seventeenth century Italy," he explained gently. "May I?" With a nod of permission, he adjusted how high she held the candle, placed her left hand on her stomach rather than her bosom, and turned her chin to the angle he wanted. But as he began to draw, she stiffened all over again. Feuilly tried to tell himself that it did not matter, that she was here only for her own protection and his financial liabilities. In the end, she was just a Jew, and this was just a job. But she was also an attractive woman, and Ruth coming to Boaz was an excellent subject for a painting, and if he had preparatory drawings, then he might, one day, be able to produce such a work. Even this week, he had been asked to bring samples of his work to the printer – perhaps an etching, rather than a canvas, could come of the night's labour. Duret did not only sell bawdy pictures, after all. It had to be done correctly. And even suggesting that Ruth was paralysed with fear at what necessity required her to do, Mme Mirès was less than ideal for the body.

He finally had to take the candle away from her. He could always find another body, someday, when he had a girl or, less likely, money to hire a model for a couple of hours. The sort of girl who would expect to take her clothes off and wonder why he just wanted her to stand with a candle. "I need a bit of a rest," he lied, shaking out his hand as if he had been gripping the pencil too tightly. To get Lydie to relax, he had generally begun to make love to her, so that she flirted her way through anything he ever did. But other than Lydie, he had never had a willing model. Moreover, he had never actively pretended he was anything more than what he was. Always cognizant of his own inferiority when among honest people, he tended to treat them with the sort of deference they reserved for their social betters. But now, he was pretending to have had upbringing enough that he had come to Paris to become an artist, a thoroughly bourgeois notion, and he ought to condescend to Mme Mirès, since he was acting the bourgeois and she was a worker and a Jew. Perhaps Gueulemer had been right, that he was not the actor he had thought himself. Yet novels and the stage were his only prescriptions for how to continue. "Would you share a bite to eat with me?" he asked, showing off the apple tarts he had dared purchase, wishing he had someone to play the servant as the plays made it seem wrong to play this deception alone.

Mme Mirès had been to the theatre too, he was certain, for she looked askance at the pastries, then at him. "Where did they come from?"

"Patisserie in the rue St-Avoie. It had the funny writing on the sign. I made sure they were Jewish."

"Hebrew," she corrected him. "The script is Hebrew. You're too sweet to be true, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"You go out of your way to buy kosher pastry in order to tempt me into bed."

"I have no intention of tempting you into bed."

"There, you see? Much too good to be true." But she took a bite, closing her eyes as she chewed. She must get pastry as rarely as I do, Feuilly thought. The tarts were small, the pastry landing rather stiffly in his empty stomach, the sugary apples rolling across his tongue with almost heavenly sweetness. After nearly three weeks of prison bread, why was it so hard to end up on short rations? The take from the evening had to pay for all the expense put into the job, otherwise what had been the point of roping him in at all? Had he turned gullible in less than a year?

But Mme Mirès did look more relaxed, as if, having been treated as a guest and not been poisoned, she was indeed more inclined to trust him. "May I do some close-ups of your face? Just stare into the distance, really. Think about what your mother-in-law would say about me, perhaps."

She laughed and shook her head, but she did quickly fall into a perfect reverie, a sadness creeping over her features. Feuilly sketched quickly, pausing only to note that her eyes could bore holes into the floor with the intensity of her gaze. He heard a noise behind him and knew Ada had come to spy – it had the rustle of a skirt, not the harsh tread of Laforêt come home early. "You can move," he told Mme Mirès. "I'm done for the moment." He had covered a full page in small sketches, from basic shapes to a fully-realised portrait.

"Those are actually good," Ada said, though he had not bothered to acknowledge her presence.

"I should hope so. What did you think I did for a living?" He showed his sketches to Mme Mirès. "It is for you to decide if I should continue."

She took her time looking at the sheet. Feuilly's heart was in his throat – he knew the work was good, the one thing he could do was sketch from life, even if later renderings in watercolour did not always turn out quite the way he intended. He was no Michelangelo or Rubens or Ingres, no genius, but he knew his work was good.

"This is what you think I look like?" she asked at last.

"You don't think it a good likeness."

"That isn't what I mean," she answered quickly, flushing a little with embarrassment. "I mean – I didn't realise I look so miserable. Ruth, indeed. Stuck with my in-laws in a city far from where I was born, hardly making a living, coming to a strange man's flat out of sheer loneliness . . ." She trailed off.

Feuilly dared put a hand to her shoulder, and she did not pull away. "If it is too personal, I will put it away," he offered. Which was something of a lie: he had every intention of showing it to Duret, but he could always refuse later to use it publicly.

"No. Something must come of it all. Something will come of it all, won't it?"

Ada was still watching from the doorway; Feuilly could feel her disapproving gaze. "Yes. I promise that much. Can I make a study of your hand before you go?"

"It is growing terribly late, isn't it?"

"I will walk you home. I ask another half hour for the work; that is all. Yes, mademoiselle, you can watch," he tossed over his shoulder.

He did not take a new sheet of paper but used the gaps instead, filling his single sheet as tightly as possible. The expense had been made, yes, because he could not be seen to have afforded only a single sheet of paper, but he had been able to purchase only five, and one had been wasted already, front and back, with poor poses. It was easier to go in pieces, he was learning – Mme Mirès was far less self-conscious about a drawing of her hand than she was about posing her entire body. Perhaps that was the key, to treat the human form as if it were a puzzle – one could always smooth out the joins upon assembly. He had now a perfect head and neck, and a hand grasping the candle, and at least he had tracked the light and shade even if he were dissatisfied with her body as a whole. It could all be put back together, perhaps, tacked onto the body of a real model, and if successful, no one need know any different.

But it was time to let her go, to pray that everything had gone according to plan and to hope that his lack of expertise in the confidence game had not been to their disadvantage.

"This is what you do?" Ada interrupted as he carefully put away his board and pencils.

"Why are you so skeptical? Yes, this is what I do for a living. Yes, I met your man at work. Why is that so hard for you to believe?" he snapped. It was incredibly rude of her to bring it all up when Mme Mirès was standing right there. "Look, we can talk about it when I come back if you want to argue. Right now, I must see Mme Mirès home. Good night."

Ada glared at him and slammed her door shut. He rolled his eyes and turned back to his guest. Ada would have to be dealt with later. "I'm sorry. I don't know why she's such a child about the whole thing."

"You work with her man?" Mme Mirès asked as they descended the stairs, carefully stepping around the drunkard Laforêt had warned him about.

"Running away from home to be an artist costs more money than it sounds like it might," he decided to say. He was playing the slumming bourgeois, but the slumming bourgeois who has been cut off by his family might be expected to have some means of paying rent, he hoped.

"What is it you do?"

"I'd rather not say. I hope not to be doing it much longer."

"I wish you luck, then."

"Really?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Thank you." They stepped out into the street, where the drizzle had picked up again. She threw her shawl over her head and refused his arm. Feuilly was certain she would have done the same had it not been raining, but he was grateful for her sake that the rain gave her the excuse for anonymity. "Where are we going?"he dared ask.

"Rue des Rosiers. Please don't ask me for the number."

"I won't," he promised. The streets were busy with revelers returning home, streetsellers attempting to unload the last of their merchandise on tipsy passersby before they, too, found their cold, dark lonely rooms. Mme Mirès walked quickly, weaving her way among the crowds as if she were often among them, but Feuilly soon noted it was a façade. She nearly made a wrong turn into the rue du Chaume, and Feuilly had to take her by the elbow and guide her along the rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie. She permitted him to keep hold of her arm after that, even after they entered the rue des Rosiers. Only in front of her building did she finally pull free.

"Thank you, monsieur. But I must go."

"Shall I not see you safely upstairs?" She hesitated a moment, then bowed her head rather than answering. "Come, I will see you to your door," he insisted gently. He wanted to be certain that everyone was indeed gone, that she would be safe in her flat if he left her.

If there was a concierge, no one seemed to care – the lodge was empty, the door unlocked, and Mme Mirès did not seem to take the absence as unusual. In the dim light of a street lamp, she lit a candle to guide them up the stairs. "You can put it back when you come down," she told Feuilly. The house was poorer than his, a naked wooden staircase climbing four floors without any differentiation between them. On the top floor, there were four doors, just as in his building. One stood open, lamplight spilling out into the hall. Mme Mirès paused in the doorway. "Has something happened? Should I go for a doctor?"

"A doctor's no good!" the bearded man inside complained in a heavy German accent. "Where's a policeman when you need him?"

"Police?" She grabbed for Feuilly's hand in her shock.

"Gone! Everything's gone! Someone's come in and taken everything! I give you one evening at the theatre," he raged at a woman Feuilly took to be his wife, "and we lose everything! How do you like your playacting now? And where were you?" he turned on Mme Mirès. "You never go out."

She flushed. "I did tonight. Will you go for the police?" she asked Feuilly.

He had intended to see that all was well, not to be involved in the investigation itself. If he went off and disappeared into the night, he would feel an utter heel, and his abandonment might even give away his participation in the crime. If he went for a policeman, he might end up arrested for his part in the night's proceedings should the concierge talk. But Mme Mirès had trusted him, and he could not in all conscience abandon an honest woman. "Are you certain?"

"Of course I'm certain I've been robbed!" the man bellowed.

"Come with me," Feuilly begged Mme Mirès softly. If she were the one to report, he would be confirmed only a bystander, someone who had walked in with her and knew nothing of the house or its inhabitants. He might be able to slip away having said next to nothing. She still had hold of his hand, and when she turned to look at him, he begged again. "Please."

"We are going for the police," she told the man.

Feuilly shook with nervousness as they approached the mairie in the rue Saint-Avoie. Mme Mirès had not let go of his hand, but she had not looked at him the entire time, either. He knocked at the door, terrified to be seeking out the police at all, certain that he would be arrested again whether he presented himself or not.

The officer on duty, in the uniform of a gendarme, did not look at all pleased to be interrupted. "What do you want?"

Feuilly exchanged a look with Mme Mirès. Would he have to be the gentleman or would she make the necessary statement? "I wish to report a robbery," she finally said, looking at the floor.

The duty officer sighed and pulled out a sheet of paper, the police letterhead standing out darkly. "Name?"

"It isn't me that was robbed," she insisted nervously. "I'm just reporting it. It was my neighbour."

"Then why isn't he here?"

"He asked us to bring the police," Feuilly finally said. "He doesn't trust leaving his flat."

"So you and your girlfriend turn up here instead. Names and addresses as witnesses, then."

"Gabrielle Mirès, 62 rue des Rosiers."

"Daniel Feuilly, 91 rue Quincampoix."

"Who got robbed?"

"Abraham Vidal, also of 62 rue des Rosiers. He and his wife were at the theatre this evening."

"And you were with your boyfriend here." Feuilly dared not correct the officer, and Mme Mirès said nothing to contradict his assessment, either. "Did you know Vidal was going to be out?"

"No, monsieur."

"I'd never seen or heard of the man before I walked Mme Mirès home tonight," Feuilly insisted. It was mostly true – he had never seen the man or heard his name before.

"Madame? Where's your husband?"

"Deceased."

"Did anyone know you were going to be out tonight?"

"No, monsieur."

"What about you?" he pointedly asked Feuilly.

"I wasn't out. We were at my place."

"Fine. You can go. I'll be there in a bit to look around."

Feuilly insisted on walking Mme Mirès home again, but this time he left her at the bottom of the stairs. There was still no concierge, and he dared not draw attention to the absence. "Good night, then."

"You won't stay?"

"I have nothing more to tell the police, do I?"

"I suppose not. Good night, then."

He slipped off into the dark before the gendarmes had a chance to come. If his testimony of utter ignorance were needed, he had already stupidly given his real address. No more con jobs, he swore to himself. Whatever he ended up paid, the profit could hardly be worth the aggravation.


	33. Chapter 33

"I don't want to argue," Ada told him the moment he reached the top of the stairs, having nearly tripped over the drunk on his way up. "I just want to know what's going on."

"There's nothing going on," Feuilly insisted tiredly. The gendarme had him out of sorts. "Laforêt told you we worked together. I was a colourist, and I might have gotten bumped to miniaturist if a contract had gone through. It didn't, Cartoux had to close shop, we thought we'd consolidate households to save a little cash. That's all."

"So who was the woman?"

"A Jewess I met in the market. Thought she'd make a brilliant Ruth. Ruth coming to Boaz. Thought maybe I could sell it for a print. I mean, that'd be a nice picture to hang on the wall, right? Nicer than Judith with the head of Holofernes or Salome and poor John the Baptist."

"You really aren't like us, are you?" she asked suspiciously.

"Just say what you mean."

"You're skinny and girly and when you get a woman in your room, all you do is draw her. You don't belong here."

"What does 'here' even mean? Laforêt and I have a deal. I didn't realise I had to make one with you, too."

"He doesn't even know where you come from. He says he owes you the biggest favour of his life and that we aren't supposed to ask questions. I didn't make a deal, so I'm asking questions."

"You know, there was a time I never met my neighbours. Silly me, I thought that was the social contract that enabled us to all live in close quarters without murdering each other."

"I only care because of Thierry."

"I thought you left him."

"I did. He was being an ass."

"Then what business is it of yours what he does or does not owe me?"

She had no answer to that, but it did not seem to matter to her. "You can tell me or I can find out. Thierry will tell me eventually."

"You'll find out when it becomes your business and not a moment sooner. Good night, Ada," he told her firmly, shutting the door in her face.

Laforêt came up the stairs only a few minutes later, as Feuilly was carefully folding his good clothes. He heard Ada's door open, but Laforêt must have shook his head or just ignored her because the key rattled in the lock before a word was said. "Everything go as planned?" Laforêt asked, looking more at the candles still strewn about than at Feuilly. "Is that a question I can ask?"

"Yes, you can ask. And yes, it went well. I was just drawing a girl, that's all. Ada will probably tell you all about it if you give her half a chance."

"I don't know that I want Ada involved in any of your business."

"I was drawing a girl. That's all. I swear. You can look at the sketches."

"Maybe in the morning. Good night."

But in the morning, Feuilly made an early escape with the chair and one of the small tables, hoping to get all the merchandise back to Jacquemont and answer no questions from Laforêt. "What's the tab?"

"Bring back my other table, and we'll see what you owe me."

Laforêt was gone by the time Feuilly retrieved the other table, leaving their flat utterly bare. "And here I thought you were moving in," Ada said from the doorway.

"Don't you ever do your own work? What makes me so fascinating to watch?"

"I said last night. You don't belong here."

"Do the police pay you to spy on me? Or do you bring in gents to help pay your rent? Because I don't know how you can afford to stay here if you don't do any work."

"My room ain't so nice as yours."

"So Mère Fablet lets you stay for free? Maybe you bring her up here. Or visit her down there. Nice work if you can get it, am I right?"

It took a moment for Ada to parse his insinuations. "Oh, that's disgusting, you bastard!" She slammed the door.

Feuilly laughed inwardly as he carried the table down the stairs. She may not like being considered a tribade, but she deserved it after her constant insistence that he must be a fancy boy.

"Alright, here we are," he announced, setting the final table down in front of Jacquemont. "Not a scratch on any of it."

The pawnbroker looked over all the borrowed furniture carefully. "You owe me three francs," he finally announced.

"No way in hell. It's back on time, not a scratch on any of it."

"I had someone who wanted a little table the other day. Lost out on the transaction since these weren't here."

"Bullshit. If you really had, you'd have been out more than three francs. These aren't the shit you can sell for three francs. You can have two. Next week."

"If you can't pay until next week, why are we even discussing terms?"

"What if I said tomorrow?"

"Fifty sous, no less."

"Done." Feuilly hoped there would be some sign of cash tonight, as he would otherwise not have the fifty sous. He did not even have ten sous for his daily bread and was counting on Vivienne to again give him dinner. He would slip her a few francs once he was back in funds.

Without money of any sort, he had nothing to do. It being a Monday, most workshops were idle, so it was useless to go looking for work. Anyone hired on a Monday, breaking the sacred day of rest, was liable to be drummed out on Tuesday once the employees sobered up and returned to the shop. He'd seen a couple of those brawls before, back in the days when some of the masters had wanted to break the tradition of Holy Monday. But Cartoux did not observe Holy Monday, and none of his workers had seemed the worse for it. The workers hurt themselves more with their unpaid day of drink than if they turned that day to useful labour or even to a quiet rest at home. A quiet rest would do anyone more good than a drunken frenzy two days in a row.

Feuilly ended up wandering the city, both to kill time and to avoid being found at home by the police or in the market by Mme Mirès. Something would have to be done about Mme Mirès, he knew. She had been so eager to let something new happen to her, despite all the possible risks to her reputation, and he liked her for it. It was always easier to say no to desire and stick with what was known than to throw it all over on a lark, particularly when your people could only consider it a lark rather than a carefully contemplated exercise of the soul. For her sake, he would have to keep his distance, avoid the marché St-Jean. Yet what if, by some miracle, Duret wanted to run some plates that were not bawdy and appreciated "Ruth in the House of Boaz"? He had promised a split of any profit if he sold the work. It would not be a painting, of course, but it would be wrong to cheat her of even a couple of francs over a quibbling detail. His unconscious path took him past Didier's, where Pan Chrzyszczewski had to send M. Bahorel down the street after him.

Bahorel nearly earned a blow for his trouble. Feuilly felt the heavy arm around his shoulders without having noted anyone calling his name, and he instinctively pulled away, his arm back to throw a punch, when he recognised the lurid waistcoat. "Christ, you'll scare a man to death!" he argued, tossing a "monsieur" onto the end as if it could make up for his rudeness in addressing a student too much in the tone of an equal.

Bahorel held up his hands in a gesture of peace. "M. Albert sent me to fetch you. Didn't you hear him shouting? Come have a drink."

"Can't afford it," Feuilly muttered.

"Neither can they, if we're telling the whole truth." Bahorel threw an arm around his shoulders again, and Feuilly permitted himself to be led back to the café.

He knew better than to go inside, to use credit or someone else's money to buy a couple glasses of wine, to spend the afternoon in honest company when he had to spend the evening in the lower depths. But his impulses were at war within him – he wanted to say yes, to spend an afternoon with honest people who sought his company, even as he wanted to hide from them all in his degradation. Unable to speak, he let Bahorel make the decision for him.

It was warm inside the café in contrast to the damp November streets. Bahorel took him directly up to the zinc. "It's on me, my friend."

"Am I your friend?" Feuilly asked skeptically. He barely knew the student, he had just passed nearly three weeks in jail, and even if they had both been more frequently in each other's company and Feuilly had been an honest man, there could hardly be friendship between a student and a workman.

"I consider any man my friend if I enjoy his company and he enjoys mine."

"The mark of a fool, then. You know the police picked me up."

"M. Albert told me. I want to hear all about it."

He might as well have been Parnasse, Feuilly thought, anxious to see what collège was like without consideration for its wider meaning to the world. "You may not care about your reputation, monsieur, but I must consider mine. It is not much of a tale, in any case."

"I should very much like to know M. Albert meant by 'treason'."

"It means another man thought it a good idea to annoy the king, so far as I can make out," Feuilly told him. It was tiresome to have to explain to an eager listener that there was no story, that there could be no story. "I think it a very poor idea to annoy the king. Whether one likes him or not, he is the king, and I prefer life with a head to death without one."

"It isn't much of a story."

"Is that a complaint? Look, if I knew the story, maybe I'd tell it you, maybe I wouldn't, but do you really think the coppers told me what they knew? The inspector wasn't a complete fool." Feuilly stared into his glass – his glass that Bahorel's coin had bought – and sighed. "Forgive me, monsieur. I do know my place. What is it you would like to know?"

"I'm the one who should apologise for being an ass and not knowing my place," Bahorel insisted. "I'm curious. A man should be prepared in life, don't you think? But I didn't mean to bribe a story out of you with a drink."

"A man should be prepared in life. But a man who is prepared for a stint in prison is a man who has not lived his life according to the social prescriptions."

"Prescriptions produce dullards and electors, which are nearly one and the same, and would be identical if the franchise were greater. A man should be prepared," he insisted again.

Feuilly shook his head, but he could not help smiling. He had just worked out what Bahorel's aim must be. Anyone with such an affection for brawling, riots, and foreign politics must anticipate himself at the head of the column when the next funeral collapsed into chaos, or at the head of a foreign regiment of fighters in Greece. In both instances, some idea of a night in the police depot would be of more utility than mere rumours of prison life. "Very well, then. Carry plenty of cash, and you'll live better than you could have thought."

"I could bribe my way out, you mean?"

"Hardly. But the guards do like money, and they do appreciate being asked to do favours. Everything except freedom is for sale, and you, unlike the rest of us, could live quite comfortably. Should you, in solidarity, mind, choose to share the lot of the common man, you can expect to sleep in your clothes on a stone floor for however long the police decide to keep you there. Honestly, I was in the police depot the whole time," Feuilly tried to rationalise. "I don't know what la Force is really like. I've never seen inside the Conciergerie. I sat on a stone floor for three weeks while a police inspector decided whether or not to take me before a magistrate to charge me with a crime, and I was probably there so he would not have to properly log the arrest and detention in the files at any of the real prisons. It was damp, it was cold, it was crowded, it was not quiet, it was incredibly boring, and if the inspector's motive was to drive me mad, he has succeeded, or nearly so. It is not an adventure, it is not an education, it's just damned unpleasant in the end."

Bahorel clinked their glasses and took a drink. "My sympathies. And thank you for the honest assessment. I'm choosing to believe you told me because you like me, not because one of your social betters pushed you into it."

"You couldn't possibly understand who my social betters are."

"We could start with M. Albert."

"_Dzień dobry_, _pan_," Feuilly greeted that gentleman as he approached the young men at the zinc. "I'm sorry I was so distracted as to miss your call."

"You have left us. Why did I not see you in church?"

"I've had to move. Near the marché des Innocents." It was a poor explanation, he feared. It had taken little time to learn that Pan Chrzyszczewski and his daughter had been raised properly in the Church and had a traditional engagement with it, while Feuilly had known missionaries and books in more detail than the ordinary parish priests. They knew God through the structures of the Church, while Feuilly could happily go months without a mass only to end up at Notre-Dame the moment he felt the divine rush. While he had followed all the liturgical holidays the entire time he had known the Chrzyszczewskis, he had done it for Sophie, not for God. A break with Sophie and her father required that he break with the parish as well.

"Ah, a new parish. I see. But you must not forget us. I insist you come to dinner on Sunday."

"You cannot afford it with Panna Zofia out of work."

But Pan Chrzyszczewski brushed aside Feuilly's concern. "If we are poor in pocket, we are rich in spirit, are we not? You will come. Zosia will like it."

"I am not sure it is appropriate, _pan_."

"What could be wrong now that was not before?"

I have spent three weeks in prison. I am in love with your daughter. I did not go to church on Sunday because I was busy pretending to make love to a Jewess so that my associates could defraud her neighbour. The statements pushed at his tongue, but Feuilly could not speak. To open his mouth would be to condemn himself publicly.

"There is no shame in the police taking an interest," Pan Chrzyszczewski told him, seeming to assume the most obvious reason for Feuilly's silence. "Each man of us has been in prison, or would be if we had stayed at home."

"But you have no shame because you worked for the right against the law," Feuilly explained. "I did nothing, and I walk free because I cannot share the credit or the blame. Credit for you, I mean, because your country has been torn apart by tyrannical empires; blame for anyone who would so annoy a king who has not yet been crowned. I kept Panna Zofia's name out of it," he insisted. "One of the men in the workshop did something to annoy the king, probably mucked with the fans we sent for the coronation. The inspector was so curious about our positions in the workshop and our handwriting. But I took all the blame for the design on myself, if there had been blame to attach to our portion of the work. Might I hope that, at least, was honourable?"

"Yes, the women must be kept safe. Thank you, my boy. You must come to dinner, for how else can I thank you properly?"

"Your continued friendship is more than enough." It was far more than Feuilly knew he deserved, something he knew well enough he ought to abandon as a hopeless cause now that Babet needed him back. But Pan Chrzyszczewski and M. Bahorel both still treated him as part of the circle, despite his now-tainted past. A brief insistence that the police might still be following him, that his very presence might doom them all, was immediately laughed off. What did the French police matter to them? If it mattered, they would have been deported by now, surely. Feuilly could not argue with that logic, so he stayed, slowly drinking the wine Bahorel set before him, listening to the exchanges that flashed between Polish and French of plans that had advanced not at all in the time he was gone. One place of comfort, at least, still wanted him.

He listened for some time, nursing his wine, but as the afternoon progressed, he felt more and more out of place. He had not been guilty of treason, while all of his current café friends were continually engaged in the crime, yet he, far more than they, deserved the time he had spent in jail. Indeed, he deserved far more for his crimes than he had yet suffered. The police had got him wrong and sprung him, the more fools they, but how foolish were they really? The body was long gone, but the witnesses were not. Someone had ordered him sprung behind the inspector's back. Favours were owed.

Bahorel drew him back over to the zinc. "You're quieter than usual."

"You have the wrong man if you ever thought me a chatterbox."

"I can damned well tell the difference. The company isn't to your taste today but you're still here. Meaning something else is worse. I'm not asking you to tell me anything. But if it's really just all about that stint in jail, it doesn't seem to have hurt you with the girl. What I mean is, if you're down because you lost your job and got tossed out of your place, that's understood. Who wouldn't be? But if it's because of how, you're among men who don't give a damn for once. Get yourself a woman – you look like you need to get laid."

"Can't afford it." But his thoughts did immediately latch on to Viv – she was probably good for something other than a free dinner. It would explain his unfortunate attachment to Mme Mirès, as well. A girl could be of great use in so many ways. But he couldn't afford one, not unless there had been huge profits out of the Jew. And he could hardly ruin Viv by taking her up against the wall in the alley, since anywhere else her father would know immediately, and he had no privacy of his own.

"That has never stopped anyone I know, and most of my mates aren't half as handsome as the specimen you see in front of you."

"I'm sure your advice is well-meant, monsieur, but it's sorely misplaced. If you haven't a damned clue, you should keep your opinions to yourself."

"Do take care of yourself, my friend," Bahorel insisted, seemingly not at all bothered by Feuilly's outburst. He left him with a friendly clap on the shoulder, returning to the Poles.

Feuilly left the café to return to the anonymity of the streets. What good was sympathy from a student who insisted on friendship but could never provide the reciprocation necessary for that relationship? What good was the company of honest men when he had re-entered the realm of the dishonest? What did it matter that Pan Chrzyszczewski still sought his company in the family home when the truth of the matter threatened to out?

The weather had turned colder, but the tavern was as hot as ever from the bodies packed inside, smoking and eating. Babet was already at their table in the back corner, an empty plate pushed to the side. Feuilly slipped into a seat opposite him. "What's the word?"

Babet dropped a handful of coins on the table. "Your share."

Feuilly quickly counted, his heart sinking as the handful proved made up of small denominations. "Twenty-six francs and thirteen sous? What kind of bullshit trick is this?"

"I tell you, that's what I wanted to know. Of course, looking at how that place was run, I don't think they're going to miss their concierge."

Babet did not hold with men who lied to him, or with women who clung to him, and Feuilly supposed those principles could go the other way, as well. If someone's throat had been slit over the failure of the job, it was not his problem, Feuilly told himself. All he had done was convince an attractive woman to model for his religious picture. Hell, he'd gone to the police himself, hadn't he? Let the idiot coppers do what they liked with that. "I knew it looked a mistake the moment I saw the Jew," he muttered.

"What were you doing seeing the Jew?"

"As a gentleman, I walked the girl home, didn't I? Couldn't let her walk alone through the streets, not if I cared for her reputation, could I?"

"Who does care for her reputation? She's a Jewess."

"A gentleman always cares," Feuilly insisted. "It's always that way in the theatre."

"Well, you played your part, and there are your wages. You don't get extra for going above and beyond your orders."

"I didn't go above and beyond my orders. I kept the girl out of there, and it wasn't easy, believe me! Nice girls don't just take up with a stranger who comes onto them in the market."

"She's a Jewess – she doesn't have to be a nice girl. So was she as wild as they're said to be?"

"There are nice girls of all stripes," Feuilly insisted, "and she's a nice girl. She posed for me – with her clothes on, I might add; I made a few drawings; I walked her home. I am a gentleman, a would-be artist from the provinces. You didn't give me time to come up with anything better than that, and we're damned lucky it worked. Next time you need a confidence man, get a goddamned confidence man. I'm an amateur and we nearly got blown, not because I can't lie but because I can't convince a nice girl to come home with me when I only have two days to work with."

"Why did I bother calling you in, then? I thought I was doing you a favour."

"I need the work, no question, but you've never done a favour for anyone in your life. I'm cheaper than if you got a real confidence man, and it's worked out for the best, hasn't it, the take being such shit? You expect twice this for jewelry, don't you?"

"Turned out he dealt in paste, the hook-nosed bastard."

Feuilly counted out twenty francs and pushed them back across the table. "We'll call that a start on what I owe you. I'll manage on the rest for a week." Six francs and thirteen sous was a very small sum to live on, particularly as he owed fifty sous to Jacquemont, but there was still the printer, and perhaps greater attention to Laforêt's cafés could lead to something.

"You can go longer than that if you come in every night for dinner," Babet leered.

"You didn't pay yourself out of my share before handing this over, did you?" Feuilly asked, suddenly suspicious. One could always trust Babet's motives to benefit Babet alone.

"I play fair. He dealt in paste."

Feuilly stood to go. "When will I see you again?"

"I should think whenever the hell I like now that you're picking your girls based on profit rather than pussy."

Viv could not afford for Feuilly to come in every night – her father would put his foot down eventually. "Don't be an ass – Vivienne isn't my girl, and I come here only when you require it. When will I see you again?" he asked again firmly, finality evident in his voice.

"Give me a couple days to work out what's next."

"I'll come back on Thursday." Feuilly tipped his hat goodbye. "Give my regards to the others."

He was a little shaky as he left – he had spent the afternoon with drink and had left rather than beg another dinner off Viv. Bahorel's suggestion for how to spend the evening was forgotten in the grumbling of his stomach – other hungers were real enough but not nearly so pressing. He had money in his pocket now, and, it being Monday, a few street sellers were out near the theatres to catch the exodus of patrons heading home to bed before they began their labours again after the holy day of rest. He bought a hot potato off an old woman outside the Vaudeville – the skin tasted muddy, but the flesh was warm on his fingers and settled his stomach.

Laforêt was already in bed when Feuilly came in, but he sat up at the jingle of money in Feuilly's pocket. "Do I dare get my hopes up?"

"The job paid off more than half of what I owe," Feuilly said with false brightness. "This is my profit for the week."

"Does he need you tomorrow?"

"No, thank God."

"Come with me – I may be able to get you something."

"I might have something next week."

"It ain't much, but at least it's honest?"

Feuilly sighed. It had to be patently obvious that whatever he was doing was far from honest labour. And hadn't he accepted Laforêt's offer precisely because the man could keep him honest? "I can leave whenever you want me to."

"Don't be a fool, and don't take me for one. I think we can get a franc each scraping floors, which isn't my idea of a job, but it's a franc well-earned."

"You ate plenty well off francs that didn't exactly come from hard labour," Feuilly reminded him.

"I'm not complaining. You're the one who doesn't sound happy to come home with a pocket full of coin."


	34. Chapter 34

The next morning, he followed Laforêt to a café where contractors picked up additional labour for building renovations. "Different skills than builders, you know? Sure, a plasterer is a plasterer, but why pay a carpenter if you just need the floors scraped?" There were painters, too, looking to pick up some money, and Feuilly quickly fell into conversation with a man who had the stained fingertips he associated with brushwork.

"It's too bad you never set to an apprenticeship," the man told him. "Get you out of this dump of a city, set off on the Tour."

"Don't most men want to come to Paris?"

"Only because they don't know better. No, I'm out of here before winter hits too hard. Give me a nice town in the South any day, sun and wind and not so damned many people who think they know better than you. How can you have kids in a city like this? Kids need air."

"What is it you do that has a market outside of Paris?"

"Everything has a market outside of Paris!"

"A market for the labour, I mean. Forgive me, I was working in the luxury trades."

"That explains the ignorance. People need their houses painted everywhere."

"You're a housepainter! I'm sorry, I thought I recognised the shade of blue on your fingertips. The blues are a bitch to get off, aren't they?"

"Tell me about it. Some of the greens have odd fumes, but those pass after the paint dries. The damned indigo can stick to you for a week!"

"I only had a problem with it when doing tiny detail work. The smallest brush, the tightest little space, I end up gripping the brush so far down that I end up with blue streaks."

"That's just it – false finishes make more of a mess than a nice flat coat of a solid colour. Or wallpaper, though heaven help us if too many people take it up."

"False finishes?"

"Surely you were doing much the same – turn a cheap wood into mahogany or even marble."

That was the technique Aleçon had used for the mourning fans. "Tight detail work for the most part, I should think."

"Somewhat. Woods are often just coloured; it's the marble that's a bitch to work with."

"Nature has a disorder in the streaks." He had noted that some of the statues at the Louvre were not quite perfectly white; indeed, some had grey streaks that seemed to lay beneath a tiny film of white, as if the sculptor had cut too deep to hide the flaw yet not deep enough to expose it completely. The stone had seemed to flow like drapery, so perhaps it had layers like fine muslins, too.

"That's it exactly. Man likes order, except when he expects disorder. Too orderly and your fake looks fake."

"That's always the difficulty. Draw something slightly off true, and no matter how accurate it is to the model, it will be seen as your failure."

"And no one pays for failures, even when it's their failure, not yours."

His bitterness led Feuilly to believe that that was how he had landed here, looking for work for a day, when he perhaps ought to already be at a job site.

Laforêt came up to them soon enough. "Come on, I've got something for us."

The something proved, as he had suggested the night before, scraping the floors in an apartment so that they could be refinished. The scrapers were provided by the contractor, and the two of them were left alone in the large, empty room on the first floor. Laforêt looked around, taking in everything Feuilly had seen at a glance – high ceilings where a chandelier had once hung, the walls mostly stripped of their old paper, the tall uncurtained windows that once had displayed gay soirees or hidden hushed salons, the green marble mantelpiece with a classical column on each side of the fireplace, gaping and cold without the andirons. There was also the door leading to the hall and the stairs and another door leading further into the depths of the apartment. Two doors, from which anyone could enter, and two windows, only a flight above the ground, where anyone could escape: these were the most important points worth noting in a bourgeois flat.

Laforêt taught him how to position the heavy iron blades to get as much pull for as little resistance as possible. "If it's too difficult, you're taking too much off. And if it's too easy, you're not taking up anything at all." Indeed, it was easy enough work in terms of skill, but it was physically draining even after Feuilly found the appropriate pressure and rhythm. After an hour, he was sweating enough to take off his jacket and roll up his shirtsleeves, the same as Laforêt. After another hour, Laforêt dropped to the floor in a heap. "Hell with this. I need a drink."

Over a glass of white wine and a piece of bread at the wineshop on the corner, Feuilly asked, "Can you do this day in, day out?"

Laforêt shrugged. "It's a living for the moment. It's better than going down to the Place de Grève like a common labourer. You and I aren't the sort who can last that."

"I don't know I can last this."

"This is finesse as much as strength. We'll be done well before dark. Twenty sous each. We could do a lot worse for less than a full day's work. Besides, your printer might have something, right?"

"We'll see." Feuilly put no great stock in Duret. Some bawdy prints after the new year for perhaps ten francs; he dared count on nothing more. Once Ruth in the House of Boaz was complete, Duret might not want it at all.

Laforêt was right that a raboteur had to have finesse rather than brute strength, but it was heavy, exhausting work all the same. Feuilly was worn out at the end of the day and itchy with the sawdust that clung to his sweaty skin. They carried a bucket of water up to their room, wet hands freezing in the November cold, so that they could sponge away the grit even as they shivered, their fireplace still bare as they could not afford charcoal. But at least they had acquired a bucket, which meant fresh water every day. That alone was a luxury.

They were living off wine, coffee, and black bread. Feuilly's meetings with Babet were as fruitless as his second meeting with Duret. "I've got nothing for you," the printer told him, "but come back in a week." With Babet, it was every two or three days. Ruth in the House of Boaz was going nowhere, Feuilly's confidence in his preliminary sketches declining by the day. He would need a new model for the body, in any case, and that would take money. Ruth would have to wait.

By the beginning of December, Feuilly found himself drinking on credit at the wineshop around the corner from their flat.

"We've the same problem, you and me," Laforêt was saying, a little drunk. "Well, more or less. You can't stand what you were taught to do, and you're too old to pick up another trade. I might be able to go back, but not without punishment. It isn't worth my skin to try."

"What could you possibly have done?" Feuilly thought Laforêt too weak to have done anything in his life.

"I suppose you could understand," he began tentatively. "I mean, you're not the sort who's anxious for a brawl. I apprenticed as a joiner and left the brotherhood before completing my tour," he admitted.

"Left?" Everyone knew the great brawls between the competing brotherhoods that crossed age, place of origin, and trade, but Feuilly had never known it was possible for a man to leave a brotherhood and still live an honest life.

"I wasn't drummed out," Laforêt insisted, his gestures a little too broad. "I settled up everything I owed anyone before I went. But Christ. Training and fellowship are all well and good until someone loses an arm, you know?"

"Or until someone ends up dead," Feuilly mused.

"That's it exactly! Next time it could be you, and dumb luck decides it all. This time, you and your mates outnumbered them, but the next time someone hails you, it could be a couple of giant coopers! I'm good on intricate detail work, but I'm not so good in a knife fight. My career shouldn't be based on the latter, you know?"

"So you came to Paris to hide out."

"Figured there's work for all. And I was right. Got temporary work in a couple of shops before I found Cartoux. But it's hard to try anywhere long in my position. There are fewer fights when you leave the field to the mad men."

"Then what is it you intend to do?" The question had needed asking since they were all sacked, but Feuilly hadn't yet dared broach the subject. Laforêt had said something about projects when he had taken the flat, but no projects had yet materialised. Instead, they were working as day labourers, but the jobs were gleaned through the cafés for the cost of a glass of wine rather than in the open market of the place de Grève.

"To start, I've been collecting scrap wood from all these jobs so I can set up my own little projects. After the New Year, we'll see what happens. If I have to, I'll hang around the shops again asking for work. Can usually get a week or two if a brother's in hospital, and that's always safer because no one thinks you're after his job. Something'll keep me, even if it's back to the little projects."

Laforêt's "little projects" proved to be just that – a combination of small wooden toys and intricately carved pillboxes. "I know two stall holders who'll buy them off me," he explained. "The boxes were how I got in with Cartoux in the first place." From then on, every job he went on, Feuilly brought back scraps of wood. Until their fortunes improved, their money was pooled, Laforêt insisting, "I owe you." If Laforêt skipped a day of labour, he could turn out handfuls of the little animals or dolls or, if the wood were suitable, a single little pillbox, the top covered with swirls like those of a rose window in a church and sides reminiscent of the borders of the choir stalls in the oldest churches in Paris. "Have you been to Notre-Dame?" Feuilly dared ask at seeing one of these beautiful exemplars of Laforêt's work.

"Have, but this one's based on the cathedral back in Bourges. Saint-Etienne's been treated a little better than poor Notre-Dame."

The wooden animals went for ten sous a dozen wholesale, sold on through the New Year as cheap presents for children, brought by Saint Nicolas or Père Noël or, at the New Year, overtly given by relatives themselves. The pillboxes could fetch as much as 30 sous each with inlay work, but a box like that took more than a day to make. Yet so long as they could steal scrap wood, the money Laforêt earned from the little projects was pure profit, and along with the outside labour, the combined proceeds could at least keep the two of them in bread over the course of a week.

A week that soon stretched to two, then to three. Duret finally said, "After the New Year," and made it sound final. There was no more hope from that quarter. If a morning was spent at a café and no work materialised, there would be no work in the afternoon, either, rendering full days wasted for Feuilly, though Laforêt of course took the afternoons to make up his animals. Something had to give, Feuilly thought, as he spent too many days drinking on credit or pondering the state of the Poles. He dared not go back to them until he was more certain of his situation. M. Bahorel's sympathies had been unexpected, and Feuilly did not want to encourage whatever intimacy the student wanted to provoke. The student would not be the one to suffer by it when it all fell apart.

In the first week of December, a new hand-lettered sign had appeared two doors down from the café where Feuilly spent most of his time with the decorators. Having as much time as curiosity, Feuilly went to read it, expecting it to state the terms of a flat for rent. A large flat for rent might need redecorating and thus might bring work for some, at least. But the sign instead read, "Cabinet de lecture, Mme Duzan, 2nd floor". A reading room had appeared on the street.

Feuilly ignored it at first, assuming that it was probably for his betters, but when he saw the concierge sweeping in front of the building one morning, he asked, "What's with the reading room?"

"Madame had a choice to give up her second floor rooms at the quarter or do something to pay the rent. She hasn't got a novel in the place, so I don't have my hopes up."

"Will she take any customer?"

"If she knows what's good for her, she will."

Feuilly thanked him for the information. What might the woman have if not novels? Of course it would cost, but if her rates were as reasonable as a glass or two of wine, he might have found a new occupation. But he was getting wine on credit much of the time now, so what did it matter that one was as cheap as the other in ready cash? He had no cash to hand. And surely the rates could not be so cheap.

But three days later, on the proceeds of a quick job mixing colours for Manoury, his comrade the housepainter, he climbed to the second floor to see just what Mme Duzan, if she would accept his sous, might offer him in exchange.

A second handwritten sign was tacked to one of the doors on the second floor, stating the open hours but nothing about prices. Still, in a modest house, where the concierge had not turned him away, it was possible he might be permitted to enter. He knocked on the door. A muffled female voice bade him enter.

Mme Duzan was a woman past middle-age, dressed in unfashionably high-waisted black, probably a widow who had entered mourning at a time when such a style was still in fashion. Her room had a couple of shabby armchairs, a writing desk from which she had just got up to greet her visitor, and four bookcases fronted in glass.

"Good afternoon, madame," Feuilly addressed her with a polite bow, hat in hand. "I saw your sign."

She looked at him curiously. Did she see no customers at all, or had she not expected to attract any of the workers that walked up and down the street every day? He felt terribly out of place in the quiet room, its spare furnishings reeking of bourgeois comforts, but he had entered, therefore he must press the encounter. "You like to read?" she asked.

Was she condescending to him? Or was she merely confused by his presence? She had addressed him in the formal, while she would have tossed him out on his ear in the familiar if he were really so out of place. Four entire bookcases could not be discounted when she had asked a confused question rather than thrown him out. "Yes, madame," he answered politely. "Whenever I get the chance."

"I have no pot-boiling novels."

"The concierge told me. May I look around a little?"

"If you like."

Feuilly did not know what he had expected to find when the concierge said there were no novels. Religious tracts, perhaps, or old histories of the kings of France. There were histories, but of vanished empires, not of the House of Bourbon. There were Latin texts he could not read, very old and much abused, and Greek texts of the same fashion. There were scientific publications, and works of military strategy, and a few volumes of poetry and classic plays. He had not seriously thought how actors learned their lines, perhaps he had thought they received manuscripts passed down from the authors. He knew Racine and Molière were long dead, of course, but he had never contemplated how long. But here was _Phèdre_, set down on bound paper, and here _Tartuffe_. Here was a treatise on artillery, published under the old regime, and here a history of the Venetian Republic. Of the hundreds of volumes around him – a quick glance showed each shelf held at least ten volumes, and there were five shelves to a case – he had not read a single one, though he knew the plays from the free performances the government gave from time to time. Even if one discounted the Latin and Greek texts, there were over a hundred books here he had not yet read, a hundred books of knowledge that, if he were lucky, he might take for his own.

He pulled the first volume of the history of Venice from the shelf. "How much to borrow this one, madame?"

"All the books in French are ten sous a day if you take it home. If you are quiet, you may read it here for five sous a day."

She would permit him to stay all day, in one of the fine armchairs, and nourish his soul for the price of a pot of wine? "Five sous, then." He counted them out and handed them over, protectively holding the book against his chest.

"What is your name?"

Why did she care? Then he noticed the ledger. Of course, she would mark down what book he read, how much she earned for it, and assign it to him. "Feuilly. Daniel Feuilly."

"Can you sign your name?"

"Of course," he answered a little snappishly, rather taken aback by the question. Even a man who cannot write a letter can usually sign his own name, he thought, as he took up the pen and made a deliberately ostentatious signature. He might be a workman, but he was reading her book, wasn't he?

Yet soon enough, he forgot that she was watching him at all, as he let go of the day-to-day concerns of the world and lost himself in the history of the glittering republic.

He went back the next afternoon, and the next, telling no one where he went for fear they might laugh at him, or that Laforêt might consider it a waste of their shared funds. But he was fascinated by the grand building works of the doges and the domination of trade. Five sous a day meant he could afford even less to eat, but he had less desire for food so long as his mind was engaged. He would have spent as much or more in wine and bread were he not so well occupied with mental labours.

After only three days, Mme Duzan had grown used to him. Or at least she had stopped watching him like a hawk, as if at any minute he might give up reading and attempt to steal back the five sous he had handed over, for she had nothing else to steal. She had few customers, perhaps because she had no pot-boiling novels, and she mostly sat at her writing desk, sewing shirts or something and waiting for anyone to come. When he moved on to the second volume, beginning with the fifteenth century war with the Turks, Mme Duzan said to him, "My husband was at the capitulation, you know."

"Pardon?" He was signing his name to the register again, one of only two names that appeared more than once.

"My late husband served with the Emperor. He was there when we took Venice."

That explained why she was reduced to setting out his books as a public reading room to any comers – he must have ended up on half pay, and now even that was gone. But how could any army have taken such a jewel of the East? Perhaps the Emperor's fall was a just punishment for his audacity, even if it did leave little Mme Duzan to scrape for her living.

Laforêt had his little projects, and Feuilly had found his own. Work stepped in soon enough to interrupt his journey through Venice, but after a few days he made it back. When Venice had fallen into hard times in the eighteenth century, as Turks and Austrians took more of her land and Genoa took more of her trade, he at last understood how the poor old lady had fallen to the armies of the French Republic. It had not been the glittering republic of Titian for well over a century, and like poor Notre-Dame, it must still be sinking in despair, he thought. Yet how awful that the Austrians should have taken what was left. The Turks, being backward but a Mediterranean people themselves, might have understood her better than these German-speakers of the mountains. Austria, that rapacious empire that swallowed nations, had shared in the destruction of Poland as well.

But then, the Turks would have treated the Venetians the same as they had the Greeks, and that would never do, either. The Venetians should have had their republic back, to do what they could with it, just as the Greeks ought to have their country, and the Poles, and something must be found for the Jews. Wasn't there something in the Bible saying that the nations must have peace? The Austrians weren't ordained by anything but a temporary strength. The Venetians were strong once. If they were as determined as the Poles, someday they, too, might have their freedom again.


	35. Chapter 35

"You look like hell," Babet told him.

"Don't remind me." Feuilly had spent all day assisting Manoury on a one-off job. The assistant had to mix the paint, which was hard enough in multiple batches, and then carry the pail up the scaffolding. One arm to haul yourself up the rickety, uneven ladder, and one arm for the heavy pail. Both arms were sore, he was tired, and he did not particularly want another evening with Babet and Gueulemer. He had come for two things: the prospect of paying off his debt and the hope that Viv might be able to give him a little meat for dinner. Heavy work on brown bread alone was probably the reason he felt weak as a slug.

"Going straight never worked out for you."

"Working for you hasn't worked for me very well, either, has it?"

"Only because you think you're too good to do the thing properly."

"Yes, forgive me for not turning highwayman the moment my purse runs low," Feuilly snapped.

Gueulemer joined them, dropping heavily onto a stool that creaked under his weight. "Drink!" he shouted belligerently in the direction of the counter.

Viv came hurtling out of the kitchen, an ill look on her face for being sought in such a manner. "Which one of you bastards was that?"

"Over here!"

Feuilly wished he could slip away – there was no good to come of staying in such company and plenty of shame from being in such company in the first place – but he would have to pass Viv, who was coming up quickly. He had time only to slump in his seat, his cap low over his eyes, knowing he was acting like a guilty child but unable to stop himself.

Viv slammed the pitcher down on the table, red flecks of wine jumping everywhere. "Take the whole thing, why don't you? Feuilly!"she exclaimed, her voice suddenly bright. "I'll bring you a glass. Do you want something to eat?"

His stomach growled eagerly at the suggestion, but he forced himself to shake his head. "I shouldn't."

"You know I don't want your money." He did not even have time to thank her before she hurried off.

"That there is a fine relationship," Gueulemer told him.

"Not one he's inclined to profit from," Babet prodded. "You've got to like a woman who is neither whore nor wife."

"You don't like any woman," Feuilly said.

"I don't like clingy bitches," Babet admitted, "and no one likes whores after you don't need them anymore. That toy you got from mummy turned out to be a real piece of work."

"A clingy whore," Feuilly found himself agreeing.

"Now this girl, gives you whatever you want, you go home, and she goes back to work. Both of you fully satisfied. Take what you can before that changes."

"Is that how you got stuck with a wife?"

Viv returned with a handful of glasses for the table and a plate of stew for Feuilly, saving Babet from having to answer anything about his wife. "It's good to see you," she told him, touching his arm in a gesture that might have been intended as friendly but lingered as something more.

"Hey, what about me?" Gueulemer asked.

"You're a bastard. Did you want something?"

He pointed to Feuilly's plate. "Plate of that."

"Dinner all around?" she asked, but Babet waved her off.

"Not hungry?" Gueulemer asked.

"Bad enough I have to watch the two of you swallow that shit."

"Some of us have been working all day," Feuilly mumbled through a full mouth.

Viv returned with another plate and two hunks of dry brown bread. "You tell me if you want more."

"I'm fine. Thank you."

Gueulemer tucked in without another word.

"If you're not going to eat, you might as well talk," Feuilly said to Babet.

"Waiting on our fourth," he replied.

Feuilly put down his spoon. "Something's in play."

"Maybe."

He ate quickly, with as much of a childish sense of anticipation as with hunger. The stew was warm and tasted of meat, though it was mostly cabbage and potatoes. Viv had done what she could to pull out some real pieces of flesh for him, instead of the mere shreds one expected, but three or four bites were all she could do with so little to work with. It was still more satisfying than bread and apples and the occasional plain potato. Eating faster could not bring the fourth man any more quickly, no matter how much Feuilly wished it, but it did sate the pit in his stomach. Gueulemer shoveled in his meal with the haste and possessiveness of all prisoners – even Feuilly's hurry could not compare to the speed with which the big man swallowed his stew and belched his satisfaction.

Montparnasse turned up as Feuilly was wiping the plate with his last mouthful of bread. "So you got out. Now will you tell me all about college?"

"Why haven't I seen you since I've been out?"

"Because the little brat's supposed to keep his distance," Babet threatened. "Once he got wind of the last job, he wanted to do the Jew in himself. "

"Who can I practise on if you won't let me use a Jew?"

"No one until you're older, you little idiot."

Gueulemer bellowed, "Now get!" Parnasse went scrambling for the door.

"I'm sorry," Feuilly apologised.

"Don't bother. How were you to tell 'eager' meant 'lying sack of shit'? You lost me a lockpick, but you're back, so why should I hold the would-be Macaire against you?"

So it was to be a break-in, Feuilly surmised. The lockpick had returned. "He may turn out decent when he's a little older."

"I'm not keeping my hopes up. Neither you nor he is of the typical run, but that don't mean you're as like as either of us had wished."

The fourth man proved to be Demi-Liard, looking as snake-like as ever. Cadaverously thin with narrow, slanted eyes, he was only a skin disease from being the most convincing snake man in any curiosity show in France. Feuilly had been terrified of him as a child, until Babet proved far worse. Demi-Liard nodded to him as he slipped into the vacant place at the table. "What's the word?" he asked Babet in his surprisingly deep voice.

"The boy's in, so we don't need a key. The sooner the better."

"Right before New Year's for maximum cash?" Gueulemer suggested.

"How damned stupid are you?" Babet snapped. "Between Christmas and New Year's, the place will be full."

"Surely it's full now," Feuilly said. "All the rich folks are in town by now. Do you know who they are? Maybe they'll go to Rheims for the coronation."

"Who wants to wait that long?" Gueulemer asked.

"What are we after? Standard take?"

Babet finally spilled the address – the first floor apartment of a perfumer, so any suggestion they had spent the autumn hunting season at a country estate was proved ludicrous. A perfumer of large profits, however. "The things he's been seen carrying up there, he ought to be made to share."

"How many servants?"

"Doesn't matter – they live up top, and there's renters in between. If we go in after everyone's in bed, we can have anything we want from the main rooms and the shop, no interference."

"Concierge?"

"Wants a hundred francs," Demi-Liard informed them. "I say we go in through the shop and do an end-run around the greedy bitch." Gueulemer agreed.

It was easy enough for Gueulemer to say or Babet to silently acquiesce to such a plan, but Feuilly would be the one breaking in and Demi-Liard could be identified. Yet a favour was a favour, it was just picking a couple of locks, and if the concierge thought she could get five louis for looking the other way, the profit would more than clear what remained of his debt. "Just tell me when and where to meet you, and I'll do whatever you need."

"You could be a little happier about it," Gueulemer chided.

"Forgive me for not demonstrating due enthusiasm."

"Enthusiasm?"

"Zeal. Fervour. The happy excitement you want to see." He did not bother to refrain from rolling his eyes.

"Why did you teach that boy to read?"

"The alphabet and a few syllables so he could start to make out the newspapers – he did all this his own damned self," Babet said defensively.

"So do we have a plan?" Demi-Liard asked.

"Next Thursday night," Babet decided. It would be about a week before Christmas. "And throw something at your concierge so it doesn't all collapse in flames. Some of us aren't so eager to join our mates in hospital."

At least someone was concerned with the risks, Feuilly thought, even if it was the same man who had chanced using a false key. Perhaps Babet took his associates' opinions into consideration more than he had thought. Or he had been desperate enough for the money and Gueulemer would never step back from a risk when it enabled him to be lazy, which was probably more likely. A false key took less time and less mental effort than picking the lock. Gueulemer was at fault, he decided. At least it would all be over soon. He slipped away to where Viv was resting at the counter. "Thank you for dinner."

She pushed a hand toward him, but he did not take it. "I'll always do whatever I can for you."

"Would you come outside for a moment?" One could not continue to get something for nothing, and perhaps M. Bahorel had had a point. A little petting in the dark might be good for them both.

Her expression brightened immediately. "I'll be right behind you."

Unfortunately, Parnasse had been waiting for him. "So, are you going to tell me about college?"

"There's a reason we prefer to call it hospital – you might as well be dead because you're so damned bored. Now go bugger off. I can't give you anything you want, just advice about the pont d'Arcole you already know." It was the most likely place Parnasse was sleeping – Feuilly had spent many a night under its arches himself.

"Bastard," Parnasse muttered as he shuffled off into the dark.

Viv was soon at his side. "What did you want?"

What did he want? Best to stick with the plan, he told himself, even if it was something Babet might approve of. "A kiss?"

"Gladly."

But her heart was more in it than his was, even as he fondled her breast, round and firm in his palm. "I'm sorry," he tried to apologise.

"I'm not much like Lydie, am I?"

"What the hell does Lydie have to do with anything?" he asked in confusion. Her tone had been far too understanding, but she was dead wrong as to his troubles.

"Someone like her is who you'd rather be kissing, is all."

"Lydie is a self-centred bitch who could only ever care that I bring in money."

"So you weren't thinking about her?"

"Why should I? I haven't given her a moment's thought since I've been back here." Even when M. Bahorel had suggested he get himself laid, Viv rather than Lydie had sprung to mind. Lydie had not come around, and he was grateful for her silence, now that he bothered to think about it.

"Your other girl, then."

He had not been thinking of Sophie at all that night, either. "I was just thinking I shouldn't use you like this. We fondle a little, you steal me dinner. You're worth better than that."

She sighed. "So are you, when you put it that way."

"I'm damned grateful – can never thank you enough – but we shouldn't be trading favours like this. You've fed me for too many years now. I'd rather you threw a little bread Parnasse's way, to tell the truth. The kindness won't hurt, even if it doesn't much help."

"He won't grow up anything like you."

"Maybe that's for the best. Less disappointment all around." Viv suddenly shivered in the cold, her whole body wracked with the spasm. Feuilly hugged her tightly. "Go on in. I'll see you next time."

"There will be a next time?" she asked hopefully. Even with these confessions, and the aborted petting, she could still be hopeful.

"I still owe Babet, don't I?"

Walking through the damp December night, he tried to shrug it off. He owed Babet, and that's all there was to it. He was not turning into Babet, nor was he so far gone as little Parnasse, all bravado with no experience behind it. He might wish he were working honestly, he might wish he could court a decent girl, but a man had to live in the world as it was, at least until he saw a way to remake that fossilised society into what it could be. There was no point changing yourself alone: that would be just a confidence game, liable to get all fouled up by innocent outsiders in the end.


	36. Chapter 36

The lock was easy, its levers sensitive and willing under Feuilly's tools. Perhaps there was another bolt on the inside, or even just a shopkeeper's bell that would sing out the moment the door slipped open, but he was not afraid. He knew this feeling well, the fingers supple despite the winter cold, the whole body alive to the slightest sound. He had at last grown accustomed to the weight of the pistol in his pocket, an unlooked-for lump of awkward metal.

The pistol was on loan from Babet. Two days before, it had been pushed across the table at him. "What's this for?"

"You. What do you think?" Babet's opinion of his penetration was obvious.

"You know I've never fired one of these in my life."

"That's why you get it early. Go to Nadin's outside the barrière de Charenton and get some practice."

"On what? I can't afford powder and shot."

"That's why you go to Nadin's. He's expecting you."

Nadin had constructed an enclosed shooting gallery in his garden after too many complaints of missed shots making holes in his neighbours' fences. He was one of Babet's acquaintances from the circuit of provincial fairs, a one-handed former soldier who now taught the trick shooting he used to display for country rubes willing to drop a sou on dangerous entertainments. The whole set-up was not to Feuilly's taste – hiding the pistol from Laforêt, certain he would end up shooting himself accidentally, learning an unsought skill from a man he knew only by reputation – but he had no choice. It turned out less dangerous and more ridiculous than Feuilly had anticipated. A one-handed man had greater felicity with the muzzle-loading firearm than he did. His first attempts at aim were ludicrous as the gun jumped uncontrollably in his hand with every pull of the trigger. "Grab it tighter, you idiot!" the old soldier would shout at him every time he tried to mitigate the the recoil. "You're just making it worse!" If a hand-held cannon required so much control, how could anyone escape the kick of a rifle uninjured? Feuilly wondered.

But in the end, his hands black with powder residue, he could add a few new holes close enough to Nadin's battered outlines for the man to be satisfied enough. "That'll do for now. Come back and we'll see if you're capable of remembering a damned thing." Feuilly had no intention of ever going back, but he had certainly used enough of Babet's money on powder and balls, he feared. Yet more to repay out of the coming job.

Laforêt had smelled the gunpowder on him that night and looked concerned, but he had kept his word and asked no questions, not even when Feuilly told him he'd be gone a full night. He had not said anything at all, which did not leave Feuilly at all confident in his acceptance of this particular job. The pistol had not left Feuilly himself at all confident in this particular job, but Laforêt's silence worried him further rather than reassured him.

None of it mattered now, however, with such nice levers under his tools. Too damned many of them – he had hitched four already and he was not yet done – but they moved as he wanted them to, only one so far slick and hard to hook into place. He felt a surge of excitement as the last lever slipped into place. A hard turn with the tension rod and the bolt shot back into the door. His part was done for the moment.

Demi-Liard pushed him aside, eager to be the first one in. He pushed the door hard and fast, a quick movement that would strangle any jingle of a bell or squeak of a hinge. There proved no bolt, no bell, and only a single quick squeal as the hinges gave way at once. He oiled them as the other three hurried in off the street, closing the door behind them in well-lubricated silence. The shutters over the shop windows still closed, Gueulemer opened the shade of the dark lantern, spilling flickering light into the room. Bottles and jars glinted on shelves; a counter stood out as a dark bulwark. Stairs rose into the darkness behind that counter, more perceived than seen in the shadows.

The second lock, at the top of the stairs, was less cooperative than the first, the levers slippery and unwilling to stay where he wanted them, but it had only three and yielded in a short time, surprising Feuilly after all the initial trouble. With the shutter over the lantern closed again for safety, the four men pushed their way inside. Feuilly had always preferred houses to flats – the internal walls of a flat were often so very thin, and sounds on another floor could more easily be discounted than sounds that came through a thin dividing wall. In a house, the master would be upstairs, the servants up further yet; in a flat, the servants might be at the top with the rent-paying seamstresses and labourers, but the master was merely a screen away from his salon. It was really no wonder Babet so often resorted to stick ups in the parks and arcades, as one was just as close to man in his flat. But a shopkeeper who lived above his shop would keep the cashbox at home, and if they could find it and leave unseen and unheard, it would be a grand pay day. Even a few trinkets would be more profitable than the cash a bourgeois carried on him of an evening, and the target was said to be a collector of interesting trinkets. For the moment, the flat was silent, the men holding their breaths as they listened for the tell-tale signs of a sleepless house. But there were no lights, and no sound came.

Gueulemer, his native impatience to the fore, opened the lantern's shutter. They were in the family's salon or at least reception hall – framed pictures anonymous as mirrors in the dim light, chairs and a sofa against the walls, heavy dark curtains over the windows, and a tall cabinet of knick-knacks that Demi-Liard set to emptying. Another door, also locked, led deeper into the flat. Three doors had better be worth the damned trouble, Feuilly thought as he massaged the levers into place. If the other side proved to be the bedroom, was this why he had a pistol? But who would place their bedroom so close to such an open reception room if they had another choice? Logic stated that the next room was perfectly safe. The door opened easily and silently, taking them into what appeared a book-lined study. A table of no great size and four chairs stood not far from a writing desk and bookcases. A few pulls showed the books mostly fakes, a hollow display of a shopkeeper's false erudition. The lower half of each case was a cabinet, many containing interesting little objects, along with a full set of china, folded textiles, and a selection of silver serving pieces. Study and dining room, then. The opposite door very likely led directly into the master's bedroom itself.

Feuilly began stuffing handfuls of silver cutlery into his bag, though he was quickly interrupted. One of the cabinets was locked, he understood from Babet's beckoning motions. While Gueulemer pulled out silver salvers and a rather large tureen, Feuilly picked his fourth lock of the night. This one was only a warded lock, but with complex wards that did not at all like most of his tools. "What's taking so long?" Babet whispered harshly, his lips touching Feuilly's ear.

"Damned awkward wards," he whispered back. Answering was a distraction – he had to feel again for the pin that was stopping everything up. If he could get around that pin, which he had thought he had done before Babet interrupted him, he ought to be able to move the entire mechanism and open the door. It opened at last, with a faint click as the bolt slipped into place. With a quick motion, Babet called over Gueulemer – they had found the cash box. Only Gueulemer, with his thick muscles, was really qualified to carry the iron-bound box any distance further than down the stairs; they would smash the lock, or the box itself, later. Babet took up the silver Gueulemer had collected, and Demi-Liard passed Feuilly's bag, now packed with unknown trinkets, back to him, and pointed out a couple of small framed paintings or prints he wanted Feuilly to carry. Demi-Liard's own bag was also full, and he had his own frames to haul back to the safe house.

They must have stayed too long, or closed the study door too heavily, for as Feuilly was struggling to cover some of his tracks by locking the door to the shop behind them, its slippery levers not eager to let him move the bolt back into place, he thought he heard a faint shuffle inside. The walls had been thin, he suddenly believed with the fervour and terror of a convert. The master had awoken, and now, through those papery walls, he could be heard climbing out of bed, wondering just what noise he might have heard. Feuilly froze a moment, swore he heard a door open – how silly, he tried to tell himself, there were two whole rooms between him and the bedroom, if bedroom it had been, so how could he hear the master open his bedroom door? - and with belief stronger than reason, pulled his tools and slipped down the stairs as rapidly and quietly as he could. Now there was a footstep above them, a creak of the floor that proved his sixth sense had been working quite well after all, and more than a footstep as no locks stopped the shopkeeper's mad rush to see what all had been done to his shop. Gueulemer, the stupid clod, shifted the cashbox more comfortably under his arm, a cascade of metal coins falling against each other within the wooden compartments that did nothing to muffle the sound. Babet, one arm full, tried to motion to Feuilly to grab the paintings he had set down in order to lock the door, but Feuilly made a rude gesture and pushed his way out the door, jostling with Demi-Liard to get through, Gueulemer on their heels.

He heard the gunshot just behind them as they took flight. Had it been Babet or Gueulemer? The whole street would be awake now, a gendarme would come running, they were all laden with take, and instead of melting away into the night, separating to be more difficult to follow, the three panicked men kept together in a clump, intent on reaching the safe house. Perhaps neither Feuilly nor Demi-Liard trusted Gueulemer with the cashbox, that grand prize of audacity no bag of trinkets could possibly replace. Feuilly dashed up the stairs with Demi-Liard, Gueulemer hot on their heels, intent on getting his fair share and giving Babet a piece of his mind over that inane gunshot. By the time he reached the top of the seemingly infinite staircase, his heart was beating fit to burst out of his chest.

"Fucker!" spat Demi-Liard.

Gueulemer raised a huge fist. "Are you talking to me?"

"I am now, you moron."

"Where's his holiness?" Feuilly asked, trying not to let his fear show. The bad fear had taken hold of him the moment he first perceived the master of the house, and while they had all gone scrambling at once, he suspected that he had started the mad dash. The good fear sharpened the senses, made a man lean and quick and ready for anything; the bad fear took hold of him entirely and closed him off from any path other than flight. It was a weak, cowardly, womanish emotion that he knew he had given in to. The question now was if they had noted it and blamed him for the most obvious consequence of their rush: Babet was not in the room with them.

"I thought he was right behind us," Gueulemer said. He set the cashbox down heavily. "At least we got this."

"Yes, what a consolation prize for nearly getting busted," Feuilly said sarcastically, trying to cover his frayed nerves.

Footsteps on the stairs prevented any response. Feuilly's hand flew up unconsciously to grab one of his long curls – his fingers needed something to toy with in a desperate attempt to release some of the tension that overwhelmed him. It was probably just Babet, but what if they had been followed? He heard the metallic clicks of Gueulemer and Demi-Liard cocking their pistols.

"Don't shoot me, you bastards." Feuilly let out a breath of relief even before the door opened. The voice was Babet's.

Of course, Babet's safe return was Babet's pissed off return. "What the hell was that, leaving take like a Bicêtre idiot?" he immediately accused Feuilly, dropping the paintings Feuilly had abandoned at his feet.

"I did my damned job," Feuilly pushed back, the fear suddenly gone, leaving anger in its place. "We got in, we got a good load, we even got the fucking cashbox! And you're in my face about three goddamned paintings?"

"We have a buyer for those," Demi-Liard put in.

"Then why didn't you pick them up yourself," Feuilly snapped. "Here, you can take this back, too." He pressed the borrowed pistol on Babet. "This is two murders now that I didn't want to be involved in."

"Don't be such a woman. I didn't even hit him."

"Then what the hell was the point?" Feuilly hissed, his jaw clenched. He wanted to shout, but he dared not wake any neighbours who might be scrupulous enough to talk to the police.

"He didn't come after me, did he?" Babet answered coolly.

"You just woke the entire neighbourhood while you were at it!"

"Shut up. You sound like a hysterical fucking bitch. Doesn't he?" he asked Gueulemer. "You know damned well what I do with hysterical bitches. What happened to your nerve? Use your damned head. He was going to start shouting the moment he saw us and would probably have come after us with a poker or something, following us out into the street at the very least. That would have woken the neighbourhood just as well, him on our heels, shouting to raise the dead, and you know all that damned well after certain events. This way, I make the noise, it's not in the street, he doesn't follow me straight off because he knows I can kill him at a distance, and it will take time for everyone to react. He would have discovered everything before dawn, anyway, and I wasn't followed back here, so there's no reason to be such a damned girl about it."

Meanwhile, Gueulemer had begun trying to force the cashbox hinges. Feuilly, annoyed at Babet's recklessness, annoyed at being lectured like a child, annoyed at having lost his nerve, snapped, "Give me that. You'll wake the dead yourself if you keep that up."

Gueulemer looked to Babet, who just shrugged. "Give it to him," Demi-Liard ordered. "You're all driving me mad."

The candle in the lantern lasted just long enough for Feuilly to open the padlock. Unlike his comrades, the work did not judge him and find him wanting, nor did he judge the work. This work, the lock and his picks, had nothing to do with right or wrong, did not mark any difference between rich and poor, but was all about cleverness and patience. The king that had lost his head, the useless brother of the current useless king, had taken up locksmithing as a hobby, and he himself had trained on padlocks not attached to anything. In those cases, it was a puzzle to solve, exercising the mind and the fine sense of touch. Babet needed a lockpick because he did not have the patience for it himself. The false key appealed to the lazy or those who were confidence men at heart. The itinerant dentist was of course a confidence man of sorts, more willing to ply his wits to get access to the lock to make a mold of it than to learn the lock itself. When the body dropped from the shackle, Feuilly did not bother to hide a small smile. Rage as Babet might about his loss of nerve, Feuilly knew his way, the careful way, was the right way. Had he not just proved it through silent, dogged labour?

They shared out the coins by the reflection of a street lamp through the uncurtained window. Feuilly's share was twice what he owed Babet, though he had not yet taken account of how much had been spent at Nadin's behest. He counted out thirty francs for himself and pushed the rest across the floor to his former mentor. "We're more than even. You can have my share of the rest of the take. I'm done. No more."

"Don't be an idiot."

"I'm not. If I've lost my nerve, you don't want me anyway, do you? I'm grateful as hell, and I've more than paid you back tonight. We are done."

"You'll walk out on me a third time, you ungrateful bastard?"

"Yes. Pistols and confidence games are not what I thought I was coming back to," Feuilly told him firmly, his earlier fear completely gone. Rage as Babet might, threaten as he would, he was not a cop, and the coppers would have come for them by now if they had been traced to this house. "I'm grateful for the help, my whole damned life's worth, but you always made more off me than I did. You don't run a charity for orphans. And since you've gotten paid, you don't get to be a greedy bastard and claim the rest of my life. Is that understood?"

"If you walk out, I won't take you back."

"Fine by me. Fair's fair. Next time I get picked up by the cops, I'll make sure I deserve it."

"If I were you, I wouldn't leave yet. Let the churchbells ring again so you don't get picked up," Demi-Liard told him as he opened the door to stalk out. Unfortunately, the man made a good point. There was early morning, and there was abominably early. It was not yet reasonable to walk the Paris streets without getting pulled aside for questioning as to his motives for such an early venture. Better to sit sulking in a corner as the three ostentatiously ignored him, arguing about who got what share of the take. Arguing in particular detail and pointed tones, over the contents of his sack.

"Oh, fuck you all," Feuilly ended up snapping at them, grabbing two spoons and two knives and a flask that had somehow found its way in. "A man's got to furnish his life somehow," he tried to justify to Demi-Liard's slippery grin. No one stopped him from adding to his little pile of profit. He'd trade the fine cutlery in for pewter and coin if he didn't keep it himself. The flask was his straight-out, he had already decided. How else was a man to get through a winter's labour without some warming liquid at his side? It, too, might be traded for a simpler version and a couple extra francs, but it had a nice feel in the hand. These little acquisitions were eminently practical, he felt, and that concern for daily living gave him a bit of comfort, while his outburst had quieted his erstwhile comrades. He may have been taken for a hypocrite, but they were well-versed in hypocrisy. Such thoughts were no comfort, but Feuilly reminded himself that the honest way to get hold of basic cutlery was to pay for what other men had stolen. Such an action would be patently ridiculous, not to be thought of seriously. Babet would think him a chump, and rightly so, for such waste. Since he was not above taking money from the cashbox to pay his rent, what was the harm in taking a few tokens to otherwise improve his more honest existence? Of these things he reminded himself in the early morning darkness, waiting for the bells that would free him from any further temptations to hypocrisy.

The sky was just lightening as Feuilly walked towards the pont Notre-Dame, mingling in the streets with carters bringing their wares to the Paris markets. Women with baskets of eggs balance on their heads followed carts of winter produce and cans of milk. Squawking chickens headed for the poultry market brought a welcome sort of barnyard noise and ammoniac scent to the ordinary sounds and smells of the city. When the bells had rung for Prime, Feuilly had practically run out of the room, down the stairs, out into the freedom of the narrow streets. He needed to breathe, and he needed to pray. There were closer churches, but he wanted his old lady more than anything, more even than the sleep that was beginning to overwhelm him. He moved quickly around and through the farmers, dodging and slipping through gaps in the slow-moving crowd with the old dexterity of the gamin.

The Latin chant was still being sung when Feuilly slipped inside the cathedral to kneel against a pillar of one of the old side chapels overseen by a headless donor, dark in the early morning. Letting the Latin wash over him, he began to pray for forgiveness. In one night, he had dishonoured both his heavenly father and the closest he had ever had to an earthly one, but his greatest shame was that after the theft and dishonour, he did not feel free. Babet had pulled the trigger that morning, turning an ordinary robbery into a vicious crime, but would old loyalties, the old ways that had privileged stealth and cunning over violent noise, have any meaning that would stay his tongue if the police caught up with any of them? He, not Babet, had opened the doors, had enabled the theft of the cashbox. The last proceeds of crime and sin were in his pocket, would feed him and an honest man for the rest of this terrible year, would keep them going into the early spring. Could he throw them aside, not pay his debt to Vivienne, and let an honest man go hungry in the bargain?

What a terrible year it had been. Where had this experiment in going straight really got him? From Mireille's death to this morning's violence, nothing tangible had been gained. He was back where he had started. Yet in the moments before the police had come to arrest the entire workshop, he had been truly happy. Friends, a decent room, a girl to dream about, work he enjoyed, and the possibility for more of all of it: the things men turned to crime to find, he had found in going straight. And it was all wiped out by one damned inspector who could not be satisfied with Aleçon alone, no matter what the evidence told him.

It was the cops who had fucked them all over, Feuilly decided. He had done everything right; it was the cops and the king who were the problem. The king shouldn't have taken whatever Aleçon did so seriously, and the cops shouldn't have kept everyone without charges for that long. Or revoked Cartoux's license in a fit of pique. They appreciated the tax revenue, didn't they? Then they should have appreciated the men and women whose labour made all that money.

The priests' Latin did nothing to calm him. The service ended and still he knelt in the chapel, his head against the ancient stone pillar, raging against the reverses of the autumn. He was too tired to rage aloud, but here he felt God heard his thoughts most clearly, and in his exhaustion from the sleepless night, he no longer cared if his thoughts were sensible or appropriate. The woes of the autumn had not come from God or Satan; they came directly from the new king. And God would never have set this cowardly king above this brave people. Feuilly agreed with the Poles more completely than he ever had before – God is great, and kings must answer to men. Anything else was tyranny. "Down with Charles X" felt better to say, even if only in his soul, than "Fuck you, too, Babet". What did Babet matter in the great scheme of the universe? A petty thief, a swindler, a selfish man who did not even bother to destroy those who crossed him if he could not profit from it. But a king who let his law be so petty, he was worth every condemnation. What did the paltry handful of take in his pockets matter when the king had taken everything worthwhile in life?

Feuilly was so tired he almost felt drunk. Down with Charles X. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have meant no harm, and I will start again, I promise. You mean no ill for us. You are not on King Charles' side. How can You be, when Your Son asks us to consider our salvation separate from our earthly lives? Down with Charles X. And please forgive Your penitent child. I put my life in Your hands. Not the state's; Yours.

Stumbling home, his return woke Laforêt.

"You're back."

Feuilly merely pulled off his muddy boots and curled up in a blanket, not bothering to undress any further. The night had been too long, the morning too trying, to care to do anything more. "We're free," he murmured, rolling over to go to sleep in the grey dawn light.


	37. Chapter 37

When Feuilly woke, Laforêt was gone. He had slept deeply but not well, lurid dreams bringing him towards consciousness but never awakening enough to have heard his friend's departure. The floor was less conducive to sleep than even a prickly straw pallet might have been, and the rumbling in his stomach was a greater reminder than the church tolling noon that even a midday rising needed to be fortified.

It was a grey, dismal day, and only the height of his room at the top of the house had permitted some pale sunlight to thin the December gloom. Down in the streets, the day was dark. Feuilly bought himself some bread and choked it down, though it tasted of sawdust and was dry in his throat. As it should be, he told himself. He rarely thought about his victims – only the poor servant or whatever he had been before his throat was slit had made any impression before – but now he was thinking in similar ways about "that poor perfumer". They had taken particular items rather than just whatever they could carry, and they had fired a gun at him. That was the rub, really. Feuilly staked out his jobs of course, he did not go into just any house, but the reasons for one house over another had less to do with who the occupants were and more to do with where their houses stood and the movements of the anonymous inhabitants. An ordinary job was impersonal, one man's house selected over another by chance more than intent. This job had been highly individual. It wasn't for Feuilly to know or care how a man made his living. But first the Jew and now the perfumer: he might as well attack men face to face in the Tuileries and know less about them. He had taken men's books, their silver, their wives' jewelry, and yet only now did he feel as if he ought to have known something of those men. If he had done this to other men as men rather than as shadows, would he feel his guilt so starkly now? Or would that make him Babet, unable to feel guilt at all for the wrongs he had done to so many?

He went walking by the river. The company of other people, whether in a warm café or Mme Duzan in her paltry reading room, was a privilege he did not deserve. Babet was right - he had lost his nerve. Or perhaps he had never had the nerve he had thought, that the suspense and excitement of figuring out a puzzle in the middle of the night without getting caught was just that, a game, something that he won and they could afford to lose. But the Jew, despite being a Jew, could not afford to have lost. The perfumer, so long as he wasn't dead, could afford to lose, but what if he were attached to the specific paintings they had taken? What if Ada broke into his room and borrowed his art book or stole his sketches of Mme Mirès? His art book. No matter how many times he had hocked and redeemed that book, it would never truly be his. It had been set apart from all the other volumes in that fine house – had it been special to its rightful owner, too? But the rightful owner could buy a new one. Books were not published one at a time. The perfumer could not buy his same paintings again. Which was why they were stolen, because someone else was willing to pay for those exact paintings, ill-gotten if unobtainable any other way. Demi-Liard had a buyer for those, not for the ones he left on the wall.

Did rich people conceive of possessions in the same way poor people did? Perhaps, able to buy anything, they did not attach meaning to objects so easily acquired. The pearl bracelet, the jade earrings were merely trinkets held even less lightly than a girl's glass earrings that she saved weeks to buy but knows she may lose within the season. Or were the sapphire pendant and the cameo brooch kept carefully by, no longer worn but cherished as love tokens, as someone might hold a scrap of ribbon or a broken earring that were all that remained of gifts from a lover or husband? Sophie had an earring – just one – that had belonged to her mother. Was this attachment a sign of delicate feelings among the nobility or of the maudlin emotion ascribed to the poor?

What could be more maudlin, Feuilly reminded himself, than pondering the extent to which the wealthy could be victimised? This was precisely the sort of question he ought to ask M. Bahorel, so flippant in asking the working classes about prison. But that was unfair as well – the student had been eager, and he had tried to be understanding, even friendly to Feuilly rather than condescending. To ask such questions of him would be condescending in its own way. Not that he could permit himself anywhere near the student – or Pan Chrzyszczewski for that matter – after the previous night's events. He did not deserve the privilege, and he was far too likely to start speaking along lines that could get them all arrested. After one arrest for political actions, his public speech would certainly be watched, and this king would not appreciate questions on the degree of victimisation felt by the rich. They felt themselves victims for merely seeing women left to die in the streets because the poor beings were too old and sick to work. And Babet felt much the same, Feuilly suspected. He earned his living, therefore so should everyone else. The only pure charity Babet had ever expressed was teaching Feuilly the alphabet; everything else brought profit.

Feuilly went home, trying to shake such thoughts from his head. Perhaps he could do a little cleaning, provoke Ada into an argument if he really needed the release. But Laforêt had returned in his absence, to work on his little animals as no other work must have been available. Or perhaps not, as he was sitting with his arms crossed, knife and half-formed beast at his side, with Feuilly's tools spread out in front of him.

"What are these?" he asked darkly, no other greeting being necessary.

"Why the hell are you going through my things?"

"I was looking for a pencil."

"That's a little too damned heavy for a pencil case, don't you think?" Feuilly snapped.

He moved forward to take them back, but Laforêt jumped to his feet and blocked him. "What are they for?" he asked again.

"What do they look like?"

"You know damned well!"

"You said no questions until the end of the year!"

"I couldn't have expected this, now, could I? You, of all people!"

He looked and sounded so thoroughly disgusted – and even rather scared – that Feuilly was confused. Yes, it was illegal, yes, there were victims, he knew that damned well himself after last night, but Laforêt had managed to take Hogu in stride. What was wrong with the _cadets_? A few thin hooks of iron, that was all. The pistol was gone, didn't have to be acknowledged. Of course, in the grey light, those thin pieces of metal looked dark and twisted against the light canvas of their wrap, potentially murderous, even. And then Feuilly had to laugh.

"Did you think I'm a one-man Inquisition, digging these under a man's fingernails? They're lock picks, you rube." But it was with a wave of affection – how wonderful it was that someone was honest enough not to twig what they were. And perhaps, if one sharpened them, all sorts of devious tortures could be possible, though that would utterly ruin them for their intended use.

Unfortunately, Feuilly had to react quickly as Laforêt's fist came at him. "I'm sorry," he apologised as he pinned his friend against the wall. "I meant it with all the good nature in the world." And to prove it, he let go, his hands raised in open surrender, but his whole body steeled for the sucker punch he knew he deserved. He should not have laughed, or called Laforêt a rube. Any man, and a compagnon in particular, had every right to be touchy when his reputation was impugned.

Laforêt kept his hands to himself this time, though he glared at Feuilly suspiciously. "Lock picks."

"Come on, why won't you believe me? You can put my ass on the floor if you want to fight it out," Feuilly offered.

"Lock pick tools," he repeated again.

"It's just burglary, not the Inquisition." Feuilly was starting to sound a little desperate even to himself. Either fight it out or finish the denunciation or accept the damned things, he wanted to cry out. "You said, across the hall, a girl used to the do the same thing."

"She picked pockets."

"What's the difference?" Feuilly snapped anxiously.

"You – you have tools!"

"So did she if she was any good at it! A second pocket, a fake hand, a hook – every trade has its tools as well as its training. You've got yours," Feuilly indicated the knife and various rasps and files scattered across the floor, "and I've got mine."

Neither said anything for a long time. Laforêt seemed to have no answer, nor any desire to more physically release his anger or frustration, the impulse having passed. Feuilly saw no point in continuing the argument. He had known the experiment could never work, not for long, and at least they had found out before paying another quarter's rent. Laforêt did not owe him a final denunciation or a grudging acceptance of just how those important thirty francs had been earned. "Fuck it," Feuilly finally said. "I'll pack up and go."

"No," Laforêt protested weakly, sinking back to the floor. "I'm the idiot. You said it wasn't on the up-and-up, and at night, and I agreed to not ask questions, and I suppose that does make me a rube. I thought it was picking men's pockets at the end of the night," he admitted. "But this, it's – it's-"

"Evil?"

"Organised. You have tools. A man doesn't make his own tools."

"Unless he comes up with something better for the job at hand."

"But that's a genius. I'm talking an ordinary man of work."

"Then you're right. I'm no genius in the lockpicking trade, just a good hand at it."

"Why don't you set up as a locksmith, then, rather than joining me in day labour?"

"Because I'm not a locksmith. This is all I was trained for. That's the joke of the whole thing, isn't it? I can pick a lock, but I can't make one. I was never even trained to make a false key. Oh, I suppose I could do something with a file, a blank, and some common sense, but not if it's a lock of any greater complexity than this thing on our door. Any idiot can take an impression, of course, but no one ever taught me the arts of the false key. And that doesn't begin to touch the workings of a lock itself. I started early as a pick and took straight to it, so what point would there have been in sending me to apprentice legitimately? It would have cost money, and my value would have been completely lost."

"Had you no family who were not criminal?"

"I have no family at all. Raised by wolves – well, the urban equivalent. Lions, maybe." Mangy, flea-bitten, suspicious, and dangerous, just like the big cats at the Jardin des Plantes.

"What you've been doing – is it as bad as I think?" Laforêt asked.

How old was he? Feuilly wondered. His innocence was beginning to sound childish. "Probably not." Certainly not if he was still associating lock picks with instruments of torture, though Feuilly kept that comment to himself. "I open doors. That's all this boils down to. Opening doors. Anything else isn't on me. What my associates get up to inside is their business. I get what I can grab, and sometimes a fee for opening the door."

"So what do your associates get up to inside?"

"Not my business, not your business. Babet always has his side deals I'm not privy to, thank god. Being privy to his side dentistry was bad enough. He also does what you suspected I did, stealing men's purses in the middle of the night, only not so quietly as your former neighbour. Brujon is in prison because he gets up to stealing furniture instead of more easily movable goods, and it's hard to run from the cops when you've got a rug rolled up on your shoulder. Barrecarrosse handles the carriage trade, as you can imagine from the nickname; Gueulemer provides muscle there when he feels like it, or in burglary when he feels like it. But on the whole, it's just burglary. That's what most of my former associates do. I only ever participated in burglary. No one's stabbing people in the night, that I know of."

"I wasn't blaming you for every crime of passion in Paris."

"Why not? A duchess would never wield the knife herself."

Laforêt's jaw dropped. Dammit, Feuilly thought, even after this little snit, he's still thinking about the glories of Macaire. "You know about that sort of thing?" he asked, a little awed.

"Only speculating," Feuilly admitted. Speculating based on Babet's outside activities, but it was still only speculation.

Laforêt let out a sigh of relief – perhaps he was not so worshipful of Macaire after all – and offered his hand to Feuilly. "If you meant what you said, that it's all over, then I'm sorry for being an idiot. And a rube. No hard feelings?"

"It's all over. Not as clean a break as I would have liked," Feuilly admitted, "but it was final."

"Then take my hand, dammit. I owe you. Quite a lot more than I thought, I'm afraid."

Feuilly accepted the gesture, but he shook away any notion of continued debt. "Knowing me had you in over your head in that cell."

"Did you wonder if they'd arrested you for something you'd once done with the negro?"

"I never worked closely with Hogu. But I was damned certain I wasn't in that holding cell for some political nonsense," he admitted at last. It was something of a relief to finally say it out loud.

"Would they have brought you up on something else, do you think?"

"I've no doubt of it. Whatever Aleçon did was a joke compared to breaking into a man's house." Much less compared to murder, he added silently.

"I suppose you're free of it, then. I mean, if they had anything, it'd have come out, right?"

It should have come out, or at least his forged livret should have come out, but the inspector had been stopped somehow. "The cops, maybe. Hopefully. But the acts themselves?" He shrugged. "No matter how many masses I attend or how many times I confess, some sins I'll never be free of."


	38. Chapter 38

Laforêt said he accepted Feuilly's explanations, but the flat was still tense. Perhaps the explanations, on greater reflection, had not seemed so complete or so honest after all. But then, Christmas was fast approaching, and Laforêt worked hurriedly, leaving only for food, supplies, and to sell his wares to the stall holder. One had to make money when one could, and the profitable winter holidays would not come again for another year.

Feuilly paid down his café debts, paid the next quarter's rent early, and kept away from the house as much as possible. Work was scarce, but he had a greater horror of debt than hunger. A few francs to each of the cafés, the quarter's rent – he might be hungry, but he had put his money into the future rather than the petty needs of the day. He tried to forget that work was scarce largely because he spent little time in the cafés, and he was hungry because he spent his days walking the streets. He did not deserve the comforts of honest men, and he wished to avoid the pleasures of the dishonest. It was a warm December, wet rather than snowy, which permitted him these easy freedoms during the short days. But once Christmas rolled around, a bit more than a week after the robbery, he had grown cold and tired and bored and bitter with the society that did not bother to read his sin on his face and cast him out directly. No one even bothered to stare at him when he filled the stolen flask with water from the fountain as he dared not spend the money for brandy to drown his guilt or warm his chilled body.

His walks across the dark, wet city were often fortified with this water alone. Water from the sky, water in the gut, holy water in the churches where he occasionally stopped to pray – perhaps he was drowning, and no one bothered to notice. But he only felt the water, not the pressure. Passersby averted their eyes not because they dared not look at the thief in their midst but because they did not bother to look at anyone. Feuilly felt none of the abuse he was certain had followed in the wake of the murder; a robbery was nothing in comparison to that crime. He had exiled himself thinking he deserved the punishment, yet only he cared to punish himself. He even dared a trip back down that cursed street, where the unfortunate perfumer was doing a brisk holiday business. The holiday rush would set him and his employees right – if it had not been for the specificity of the paintings they nabbed, it would have been a perfectly victimless crime, like every other robbery he had ever conducted.

Letting go of his shame to attend midnight mass in his old parish, where he might lay eyes on Sophie, granted more relief than it should have done. Feuilly knew that she was firmly out of his reach and going to look at her at a distance proved it. His return to his previous life coupled with the desire he knew he should not indulge made it a very bad idea, yet he wanted only to see her, not to destroy her through an improper wooing. And it was the last parish to which he had in any sense belonged, so he had yet another excuse for his reappearance.

Claiming to have nothing better to do, as he had finished all he could with the materials he had on hand, Laforêt tagged along. Feuilly had not invited him, really. He had told Laforêt that he was heading to mass at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs out of courtesy. Laforêt had never gone to church with Feuilly, and Feuilly rather suspected he was coming along now in order to see that he was indeed going to mass rather than robbing a nice family while they were at mass. They walked in pained silence through festive crowds until, within sight of the church tower, he clapped Feuilly on the shoulder. "Look, I've been an ass. I'm sorry. It's hard enough on the rest of us; got to be worse for you, figuring out yourself what we were all taught from birth."

"What is?" Feuilly did not bother to hide his belligerence, but Laforêt paid him no mind.

"Life. Work. Goodness. Religion. Salvation. Everything we're supposed to embrace and your people mock."

Feuilly thought he caught sight of Sophie silhouetted against the church door a few paces ahead of them. The shadow held its head in a very familiar way. "And love?"

"Love and riches and daring are reserved for our betters, right? Or so they try to say. To hell with them. I don't begrudge you the girl. I don't know how you do it, but I don't hold it against you."

Was his motive tonight really so transparent? "Do what?"

The light from the church suddenly shone yellow on Laforêt's open face as they passed up the steps. "Be you. You go out and do what it was you were doing, then you come back and draw pictures of beautiful women that look more real than many an engraving I've seen in a shop window." When had he seen any of Feuilly's drawings? Probably when going through everything in search of a pencil, before the cadets turned up and forced conversations like this one, Feuilly remembered. "You keep books rather than hock them for the cash. You go to mass! Ada's right you aren't like the rest of us, but I don't think the negro was anything like you. Mlle Sophie ain't much like the rest of us, either, so why should I hold a grudge, even if I did fancy her longer?"

"I'm sorry. Christ, I should have realised everyone was at least half in love with her." Feuilly had never considered that he had a rival so close. Cartoux may have said no fraternisation, but he probably hadn't minded a good-looking, talented girl in his shop, either. Had Cartoux not been married, would Pan Chrzszczewski have minded a bourgeois suitor for his aristocratic daughter?

"No need to apologise. Anyone can see she'd have you before she'd have me."

"What about Ada?"

Laforêt shrugged. "Came along a bit later. She has her moments. Not enough to keep me from Fanny when we were on the outs."

Feuilly had nothing to say to that. Frustration over Sophie had driven him to Fanny as well. But the silence as they took their seats was far more companionable than anything over the past week had been.

Large crowds filing in behind them began to fill the aisles, as all the seats were taken. Paris attended mass only twice in a year, Christmas and Easter: the one a festive opportunity to stay warm at no cost, the other the only attention Parisians paid to their souls. Feuilly and Laforêt had managed seats in the middle of the next to last row of chairs, unable to see where Sophie and her father might have landed with the push of the crowd. Families crowded in, babes in arms, to hear the recitation of the miracle and to keep warm in the flickering candlelight. The whole church seemed to reverberate with the bells tolling midnight, tolling across the city the announcement that Christ was born on this day. When the sound died away, the organist began to play, soon joined by the sweet melody of the young attendants leading the priest to the altar draped in hothouse flowers.

Feuilly used the mass as an opportunity to pray, a time when God was paying most attention to those assembled to witness the miracle. "My Father, my Lord," he prayed, "I ask nothing of You tonight but the forgiveness You offer through He whose coming we celebrate tonight. I know the wrong I have done, and I repent of it whole-heartedly. I do not ask that the coming year go better for me; I only promise that I shall serve You better than I have done of late. My life and my salvation are ever in Your hands, for You to do with as You please. Forgive me my weakness, if it be Your desire. In Your name, I shall be stronger from now on. I have broken permanently with the tempters, and I give all to You. Amen."

Feuilly could understand little from so far away, the priest and the choir and a tenor soloist swallowed in the immensity of the church, but he had attended midnight masses for his entire life, ever since he had learned he would not be booted out of the warm church if he were quiet and did not engage in the raillery habitual to his caste. It was all comfortingly familiar, from the barely-heard lyrics to the Latin chant to the worshipers shifting in their seats, babies snuffling and crying, children unable to sit still if awake. Packed in among his fellows in the working class, single men and women and families alike for a special mass like today, Feuilly could give himself up to the organ and the chant and the unspoken fellowship of belief.

The priest took the host and lifted the chalice and made communion in a brief silence, the body and blood of the adult sanctifying the birth of the Saviour. The choir broke into Adeste Fideles as the chalice was lifted, and some of the assembled worshipers hummed along as everyone stood to be counted among the faithful. The miracle of the mass itself, the body and the blood taken by the priest, never changed, a miracle performed several times a day, but the watching crowd and the special music for the holiday made the miracle feel greater, more immediate than any day but Easter, when a man might take communion himself and experience the miracle personally.

Catching sight of Sophie as the crowd began to leave, Feuilly pushed past a family of sleepy children, Laforêt in his wake, unwilling to give in to temptation on a night that ought to celebrate redemption. He is come, our sins will be borne by Him, our salvation is assured. Into His hands Feuilly had just delivered himself, away from temptation, and though he had come hoping to see Sophie, the glimpse had been more than enough.

The night, like the day, was damp and chill, the stars hidden behind thick clouds. Laforêt caught up to him in the chattering crowds, whistling a tune Feuilly soon recognised a particularly jaunty rendition of Angels in the Countryside, more akin to a dance hall tune than a celebration of the Lord's birth. Yet the mild blasphemy – not even blasphemy, really – was wholly appropriate. Last Christmas had been spent with Lydie, a whore technically barred from the churches but brazening her way through mass at the cathedral. Christmas was not Easter; it asked for celebration rather than confession. After the solemnity of the mass, one should emerge into joyous earthly celebrations – food and drink and song shared with family to mark this anniversary of salvation and peace. "In excelsis deo," Feuilly recited with a smile.

Their cold fireplace gaped darkly in the night, but they turned their backs to it and shared a bottle of cheap wine Laforêt had procured for the occasion. "I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful," he told Feuilly as he offered the bottle, "because I'm not. I'm damned grateful. It was just a lot to swallow, you know? But you never tried to drag me into any of it; you always kept trying to give me a way out. Does that make bandits better men than compagnons?"

"They're mostly thieves, not bandits," Feuilly corrected. "I was certainly never holding up coaches in the moonlight. But they are generally smart enough not to start brawls over pride, I give them that. It's a young man's folly, I think, and they pulled me out of it quick enough, while that lot encourage each other. Surely the masters would prefer you be better behaved and less frequently injured in your own stupidity."

"They all did it themselves. It's tradition, to them, not stupidity, and you don't put a stop to tradition without making a mess."

"It looks damned chaotic to me."

"Only the brawls," Laforêt insisted. "It's really very organised. Nothing else could have gotten me to Paris with money in my pocket and enough training to find good work. If only you could keep the good and get rid of the bad. But that's the trouble with tradition."

"At least you had some good to benefit from. Have you noticed the King wants to bring back the good and the bad – the good for him and the bad for everyone else?"

Laforêt laughed but he looked worried. "What's the King to do with Christmas? Or with corporations?"

"Can't stop thinking, you know?"

"Aren't you afraid of going back to jail?"

"Is Ada going to turn me in?" Feuilly scoffed. "Next time, it damned well better be for something I did. I won't be getting help again."

"You really meant it, then. All up with your associates, now and forever."

"Every damned word. We're free to lose our heads if that's what the cops – or the King – want with us."

"Heads down, then, and nose to the grindstone." Was that advice or a warning?

Feuilly spent the next week scrounging work and scrounging scraps of wood as Laforêt worked furiously to finish as many pillboxes as possible. New Year's was when adults gave each other gifts, Christmas more often being for the children, and that gave them one more week to end the year with something in their pockets. He worked late into the night, sharing candles with Ada, Feuilly taking the opportunity of the light and the company to make a few sketches.

It started when Laforêt, the day after Christmas, unable to get enough light from other people's windows at dusk, had gone across the hall to ask if he might come over and they could work from a single candle.

"Absolutely not!" she had replied. "I don't want your sawdust in here. I'll come over there. Will he be there?"

"Yes. Feuilly lives here, too." Feuilly was unsure if Laforêt's condescension was put-on because he could overhear or because Ada deserved it, but much of the air had been cleared on Christmas Eve.

Ada came in any case, dragging a chair behind her. "Just because you can't afford furniture doesn't mean I have to suffer."

That night, Feuilly learned she was not a mere seamstress but an embroiderer of some talent. It was no wonder she could afford to take a few minutes for spying on him, as her piece rate was significantly better than a lowly stitcher could hope to earn. Feuilly set up his shaving mirror behind the candle to make the most of the light, and they worked for hours until it burnt low, chatting about nothing of importance, Ada more argumentative than homely.

Still, she came back the next night, and the next, and as Feuilly never left them alone – he had started to get up on the second night, to give them some privacy, but Laforêt had shook his head – she began to direct a few of her barbed questions directly at him. The tension in her neck and shoulders when she responded to any of his answers with a skeptical look, he realised, was just what was missing from Ruth in the House of Boaz. Mme Mirès had been stiff all over, nervous, but she had come because she had, indeed, trusted him. Ada, like most girls, and probably like Ruth, could look after herself and would probably tell Feuilly so if he dared suggest otherwise, but looking after oneself meant treating every stranger as if he were a confidence man. That would be precisely Ruth's fear – with Boaz still asleep, she had not yet fallen, and she was still on the verge of committing herself to trust. The outcome was still unknown and a fall without even a token monetary benefit was more than possible. Ada looked as if she might recoil at any moment, while Mme Mirès had merely looked unnaturally stiff.

The sorrow and the suspicion – could he manage to have them both read? Could they be combined, or were they conflicting interpretations? No, Ruth was sad, it was her constant state of being, so suspicion ought to be more easily overlaid than fear. Could he even get Ada to pose for him? He needed her standing body, not her bent over her work.

He must have looked at her too long that night, for she met his eyes and asked, "What are you staring at?"

"Had an idea."

"Absolutely not," she scoffed. "Besides, I didn't think you liked girls."

"I like girls just fine; I just don't like you," he batted back. "Remember my printer?" he asked Laforêt.

"The one who only ever said 'After the new year'?"

"That's the one. I've been working up an idea for Ruth in the House of Boaz, and I need a girl to pose for me."

"I remember. Saw the sketches, didn't I? If your Jewess didn't work out, only girl I know well enough to speak to is Ada."

"As if I'd take my clothes off for either of you!"

"You have before," Laforêt reminded her.

"You're an ass, Thierry," she snapped.

"It's when Ruth comes to him in the night," Feuilly explained. "Fully dressed. You watched my last model pose for me."

"Why don't you get the Jewess back, then?"

"It didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I think I need someone who finds me repulsive."

"It would take a Jew to find you attractive."

"I thought we were being nice tonight," Laforêt complained.

"I've been a perfect gentleman, haven't I, Ada?"

"That's your problem. Models get paid, don't they? How much did you give the Jew?"

"Nothing," Feuilly admitted. "She'll get a cut if I sell the picture."

"So if you sell it, I'll get a cut, too?"

"I thought you said no."

"I said I wouldn't take my clothes off."

"But if there's money in it, you'll stand there and glare at me for an hour."

She shrugged. Her needle had not stopped moving the whole time, bright flowers appearing under the silver flash even as they argued. "If it's worth my while."

They dropped the subject, though later that night, as they settled down in their blankets, Laforêt told him, "You see how we ended up on the outs. Everything's on her terms. Always." Still, Ada so far had seemed a treat compared to a clingy cow like Lydie. How had Feuilly managed to stay with her so long? Had he really only felt sorry for her and unworthy of anything better? Not that anyone was immune – he was dead certain Laforêt was going to end up in Ada's bed again by spring. Still, he'd give Lydie this much credit: she had thoroughly disappeared, not even bothering to come near him in those couple of months he'd been forced back to the old associations. She was well and truly gone, just as Ada surely would be had Laforêt not moved in across the hall from her. Still, a battle with Ada was a respectable battle of equals, not the shrill screaming match one could expect from Lydie. Laforêt did have better taste, even if he ended up with Ada again.


	39. Chapter 39

The new year blew in windy, though the temperature stayed above freezing. For the first time, the windows rattled in their panes, and the wind shot down the chimney, making the little flat nearly as cold as it was outside. "At least with the wind, we wouldn't be able to keep a fire anyway," Feuilly tried to joke.

They did manage a bit of luck almost immediately, however – scraping floors again, in four different flats over two days, so they were able to work together out of the wind. A few francs in their pockets meant hot dinners before ascending to the frigid flat for the night. Wednesday, Laforêt was asked to come into a shop for the rest of the week to help finish an order, for once requested to do what he had trained at, even if only for a few days. Feuilly found no work himself that day, but he spent the afternoon with Mme Duzan, burying his nose in Thucydides' _History of the Peloponnesian War_. Her late husband must have found the translation an easier reference than the original Greek, he thought: Caesar and Plutarch were in Latin, but all the Greeks were in translation.

When Feuilly returned that evening, he found Laforêt huddled around a low candle, a sheet of paper in his hand.

"What's that?"

Laforêt did not bother to look up. "Letter from home."

Yet more tragedy, Feuilly thought. We think we catch a break, but we can't manage to close out the old year with anything like calm. "I'm sorry."

Laforêt looked up this time. "For what?"

Feuilly shrugged. "Whatever has happened."

"It's a new year's letter from home. Christ, you look as if someone had died."

"Didn't they?"

"No. This may come as a shock to you, but in families, we like to know what's going on with each other, especially when it ain't bad news."

"Is that a crack at me being an orphan?" he asked defensively.

"It's a crack at the company you've kept, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said it. But your people aren't the sort to keep in touch with a father or a brother, are they, except for emergencies like death and bankruptcy. And then, if you've never left Paris,what would you know of bonds and distance, anyway?"

"I've seen plenty of people afflicted with homesickness," Feuilly replied defensively. "Doesn't mean they wasted money sending letters like a bourgeois." He'd overheard the dictations to the letter writers in some of the markets, and they were never about the homesickness shared in the cafés but always about the tragedies of life and death.

"My family aren't that poor. A letter a year isn't much, not when you own your own place."

"Would you go back and work for your father?"

"He wasn't happy I left the brotherhood. Distance is a good thing sometimes. And I'm not desperate enough to go begging at home, yet. Besides, my sister married a joiner, so I've got a brother-in-law taking the place that otherwise might have been mine, and he's welcome to it."

"Any troubles at the shop today?"

"Nah. These guys are gavots: the slightly more sane corporation," he explained. "They'll take in men who renounce membership in the enemy brotherhood, so maybe they think they can groom me for membership. Never again am I falling for it, for it takes two to brawl and they aren't cowards, but I wish the best of luck to them. It certainly goes easier for me so long as they think I can be brought into their fold."

There was no work for Feuilly the next day, either, but the light at the top of the house was a bit better. Rather than waste a sou and the afternoon with Mme Duzan's library, he knocked on Ada's door. It was after the new year, but he dared not return to Duret without a salable drawing in hand; he could predict the printer would tell him "come back next month", and it would be harder to send him brusquely away if he brought something for sale. "Can you give me half an hour?" he asked Ada when she glared at him through the narrow crack she had opened the door.

"For what?"

"You know damned well for what. Half an hour to stand in front of the window holding a candlestick. When I sell the drawing, you'll get paid. Swear to god."

"Half an hour. In the best light of the day."

"That's all. If you can't spare it, you can't spare it. I know you have to make a living yourself." It was a lot to ask, he realised.

"Half an hour. No more."

"And can I borrow a chair?"

She sniffed, but she did drag a chair across the hall. "Will you keep the door open for my protection, too?"

"You don't need to mock me for considering a woman's reputation. Yes, I will keep the door open if you wish it." He put the chair in front of the window, so the light would fall across his paper, and pointed to the spot where Ada should stand. "Take this."

"An unlit candle in broad daylight."

"You're a model, not an actress." It was easiest to be short with her; drawn out explanations would get him nowhere. "Boaz's bed is by the fireplace. You just came in the door."

He took her around the waist to turn her slightly to better face the direction he wanted, but she wriggled out of his grasp. "Did I say you could touch me?"

"If you think I don't like girls, what the hell does it matter if I touch you? If you don't want to do this, you can go home. I can try to find the Jewess again, though she wasn't working out as well as I had hoped."

"Just warn me before you get grabby."

"Fine. I'm going to turn you a little, then I may raise or lower your arm a bit. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes, now that you've told me," she snapped. But she was compliant, a better model than Lydie had been, really. Despite her tongue, she permitted him to manipulate her body however he needed, and she never reverted to the position he had just tried to move her out of as Lydie had so often done. Her very annoyance with him paradoxically made him more comfortable in her presence than he had been with Mme Mirès. There was no role to play with Ada; she forced her own truth on every interaction.

"Now, Boaz's bed is by the fireplace. You've just come in. You're pausing before waking him, taking a moment to consider just what you're about to do. Either he'll take advantage of your desperation, or he'll save your reputation with an offer of marriage."

"Ruth was an idiot if she thought this was a reasonable plan."

"Because any man in his right mind would have taken his pleasures with her in the night rather than gone through with a marriage contract?"

"Of course."

"That's the point of the story, though, isn't it? That mankind is capable of being better when we follow the path that we know is right, rather than the path that is easiest and most pleasant in the moment."

"But she doesn't know he's really a better man. The landowners let any poor landless peasant glean the fields. I've seen it myself. Ruth, unlike the usual gleaners, was young and pretty and the great landowner was sleeping on the threshing floor when she came to him, worn out with work at the heaviest season of the year, so he would have been an idiot not to just take some fun there and then." Dammit, that was the part he had forgotten – it was not his house she had gone to, but he was asleep in the barn, worn out from having supervised the harvest work himself. It wasn't Ruth in the House of Boaz at all, but Ruth in the Barn of Boaz. Which rather lost something, but then it would simplify the composition. He'd have to come up with a new title.

"Which means she gambled everything on a single throw of the dice. And she knows it. She walks in here knowing it is all or nothing, salvation or hellfire. Boaz might be one of the ordinary run of men after all, taking pleasures half-asleep rather than listening to her pleas. This is her gamble. He's asleep over there," he pointed again. "What would you do if you were her?"

"I thought I was a model, not an actress?"

"Pretend I'm Boaz asleep over there. Then don't move," he ordered her. She complied. Though her compliance included dropping one side of her shawl, with a curse muttered through clenched teeth, as she had been told not to move.

And that was all he had needed, Feuilly realised. A trailing shawl to show the disorder in her mind. "I'm going to adjust your shawl," he told her. "I want you to grip the corner you still have hold of as tight as you can." A more artistic sweep across to the viewer's side, a careful adjustment so that it clung a bit to her skirt rather than pooling at her feet, and there was everything he had needed.

The sketching went fast and clean. Ada hardly breathed, taking his injunction against movement very seriously, indeed. "Why do you listen to me now?" he asked her. "You can talk, just don't turn your head or move anything else."

"Work is work. It has to be taken seriously. If you really mean you can sell this, and you'll pay me for it, it isn't my business to interfere. You know what you're doing and I don't, so why should I throw my oar in?"

"Thank you for taking something seriously."

"You're not a real artist, otherwise you wouldn't be friends with Thierry, or asking me to help you out. A real artist would hire a professional model, not a Jew from the market or the embroiderer across the hall. But it is work, if you end up selling it, and if Thierry can sell those frilly pillboxes, who am I to say you can't sell a drawing of me? Even I'm supposed to be doing whitework on petticoats right now, and no one needs her underthings to look pretty. If you sell it, then it is work, and that's all that matters, right?" She was as cutting as usual, but she did not seem to be looking to get a rise out of him this time. She was, indeed, taking the work seriously, even if she could not take him seriously. Because she was right, a real artist would not be rooming with a joiner, even if he did prefer to use a Jewess from the market or the grisette across the hall as his models.

The church striking the half hour told him his allotted time was about half over. "You can move around a little if you want, stretch, whatever," he told her. "I just want to do a few more details in full light. Could you come back some evening so I can see what candlelight actually does in terms of light and shadow?"

"How much will you pay me?"

"You'll get a decent percentage of whatever I'm paid. I'm not paying you by the hour."

"Fine. Whenever. We've already started, so I shouldn't be such a bitch as to say no. Come on, put me back together and finish what you want."

But the break had done Feuilly no favours, and everything he attempted in shading looked smudged and dirty. He had to go back, make a completely new outline, trace the folds and leave the shadows. The shadows would look completely different in candlelight, in any case, he told himself. Ada had thrown him off, he decided, hitting too close to the truth, agreeing that he wasn't a real artist. The quarter had not yet sounded, but he dropped his pencil and set aside his board. "That's enough. Thank you. I'll come for you some evening when I'm ready?"

"Whatever." She threw her shawl back over both shoulders and went home without another word, her chair scraping across the wooden floors as she dragged it behind her.

Whatever. She was right, he wasn't a real artist. His shading was mere smudges; his outlines wavered. Looking back at his original sketches of Mme Mirès, all he could see were the flaws. What could be further from a salable product than these untrained pieces of rubbish?

Laforêt found him sitting in the dark, surrounded by papers. "Come eat something and tell me what's up."

"Go, I'm fine."

"Have you eaten today?" Feuilly didn't answer. "Come on. I've got two whole francs, so we can dine and drink."

"What was with the papers?" Laforêt asked when they had finished dinner.

"I should just set light to every damned one of them," Feuilly sighed. "The drawings for Ruth and Boaz. They're not good enough for anything."

"Bullshit. I never laid eyes on that girl except in those drawings, and damned if I don't think she's one of the prettiest things I've ever seen."

"So you snooped through all my stuff when you were looking for a pencil."

"You didn't exactly hide them, and you had offered to show them to me yourself. You don't get to make me the villain just because you're feeling down over being unemployed. Come Saturday night, I'll be right back with you. Have you seen the printer yet?"

"I'm waiting until I can bring him something rather than be sent off with a not-so-polite 'Come back next month'."

"I see your point, but I also see you're not taking it nearly so well as a week ago. Maybe you need to get laid."

"Can't afford it."

"Your Jewess doesn't put out?"

"She's not that sort of a Jewess."

"You sure? Eh, I suppose you're right. Neither of us could afford that sort of Jewess."

He did not even feel like defending Mme Mirès' honour. Perhaps he had pegged her wrong all along, feeling sorry for her as one of Babet's victims, never really considering her on her own. Maybe that was why the drawings were so false: the Jewess was lustful, exotic, intoxicating, while the victim was meek, tired, sad, even a little frail. He had drawn the one but modeled on the other. Then Ada, picking at him. "Why can't I seem to produce one thing that is good? One thing doesn't seem too much to ask."

"Show me what you think is wrong with them."

Feuilly shook his head. "I know what is wrong. I'm out of my depth. A miniature portrait, a nymph in an imagined glen – that's all I can do, and barely those. A full-on composition? Who was I kidding?"

"The thing you did for the King was brilliant."

"I had Sophie working on it with me, and she has real training. And we'd just been to the Salon, so I was copying right and left."

"Then go back and look at what else you ought to copy if you want to have something for your printer. How much longer do you really want to be scraping floors?"

"Because we can't really afford it, you mean?" But he knew Laforêt was right, at least in that they could not keep going for years just on day labour. And Duret was the best contact Feuilly currently had towards finding anything better.

In the light of day, the drawings still looked amateurish, but Feuilly could better identify the flaws. The smudges were flaws of haste, of scrubbing at the lines rather than more carefully thought-out blending, but they were also the wrong way to have gone about the shading. If he were to sell it to Duret, it would be for a print, an etching or engraving, and thus the shading should be in careful lines rather than smudges to make it easier for the engraver. It could possibly still be fixed.

On Sunday, he joined the crowds at the Salon for the last time. It would close up that Saturday, so this was everyone's last chance to see all the submitted works, not merely the ones that would be bought into the government collection. Alone among the press, in winter rather than autumn, the whole feel of the exhibit was different. He had no one with whom to share his excitement – indeed, he felt no excitement at all, but a distinct annoyance that it was too crowded to stand in one place for long, to fully examine anything, much less to copy anything. Even the paintings themselves seemed changed. The angry cardinal's poor victim looked rather bilious as she prayed, as if she had a stomach complaint in addition to whatever had brought her before the Inquisition. A madman conducted some Biblical marriage in place of a sane priest. A man in medieval dress looked like a cardboard ballet girl attached to an equally flat domestic scene. But the huge English landscape with the piled, rushing clouds had not dimmed at all for him.

Still, the trip was not entirely for naught. A painting of a young woman with a book, at the bedside of a man, was sentimental in subject and in handling, but the morning light was well directed at the young woman, a solid sense of craft though not of genius. It was the only painting Feuilly could find that even approached his needs, and that, in itself, gave him a little more confidence. He was not trying to compete with these men, and these men were not even the geniuses he had thought upon his first approach. Even the etchings in his art book, pale copies of the real work of the great masters, taught him more than all these outdoor settings, flat compositions, classical nudes standing alone. Did no one else miss the dark depths of Caravaggio? Not that one could go so far, of course, and waste so much ink. The angry cardinal came close – at least here the colour and shadow were correct, even if the light seemed to come from nowhere. It was not the sort of thing one would want to hang on one's wall, a dungeon scene that must end in doom. Ruth on the verge would be more akin to the girl at the man's bedside, only not quite so domestic.

He spent the rest of the afternoon piecing his drawings together, merging Mme Mirès' face to Ada's body. Telling himself it was a puzzle, something he ought to try but that would not have to be judged, resulted not in any perfect outcome, but in the realisation that he needed Ada to come back so he might get her to turn her neck to match Mme Mirès' pose. The best expression from Mme Mirès had come as she looked down, half-turned towards him, while Ada had studiously looked directly at the spot where Boaz was placed.

But it could be done. The whole thing could actually come together. And it would not look like a pasteboard cut-out. He could make sure of that.


	40. Chapter 40

"Who are you again?"

It should have been expected, Feuilly realised as he stood in Duret's office, hat in hand, hair dripping a little from the January rain. "Daniel Feuilly. I did the colouring on those special prints."

"Oh, right, of course. I haven't got anything for you at the moment."

He took a deep breath. "I have something for you. That you might be interested in, I mean." Taking the rolled drawing from under his coat, he presented, "A Modern Ruth."

Ada had complied with everything Feuilly had asked. By the third sitting, she had stopped suggesting he was not a real artist – after all, so much time had been put into it that it proved to be real work, not merely a hobby, a mimicry of how his betters might spend their copious leisure hours. Laforêt had even sat for Boaz – or, really, rolled up in the pile of blankets so Feuilly could get a better human shape though the precise features could not be discerned in the gloom. It was, Laforêt agreed, even better than the design for the coronation fan.

Duret unrolled it on his desk, looking none too eager to see just what work of genius had been presented to him. "You drew this."

"Yes, monsieur." He crossed his arms, tightly hugging himself to try to keep from shaking, one hand twisting a lock of wet hair. The money no longer mattered; Duret did not have to buy it of him. But if he sent Feuilly away with a laugh that such a thing had been produced for sale, that would be the end of it, the proof of the impossibility of artistic work.

"What do you expect for it?"

"Monsieur?"

"You called it Ruth. It's a barn, yes? Grain stacked behind her. So that's Boaz in the shadows over there, right?"

"Yes, monsieur. I thought perhaps you might be able to sell prints, that it'd be something nice to hang on someone's wall."

"You thought I might be able to sell prints."

"If you don't want it, I'll look out for another buyer," Feuilly told him with a firmness he did not really feel.

"I didn't say I didn't want it. Let me think about it. It'll need some editing. What do you think of cutting it to an oval frame, with a label?"

"Whatever would help you sell the most copies."

"You think I'm going to pay you by the copy?" Duret asked incredulously.

"No, but if you think you will sell more, you should give me a better price for the drawing."

"Who's the girl?"

"What?"

"Ruth. Who is she?"

"A Jewess I met in the market."

Duret laughed and made a lascivious gesture. "I'll give you ten for this one, but if you can get her to sit for the sort of thing you've done for me before, I'll give you twenty."

"She's not that sort of girl," Feuilly replied defensively.

"They're all that sort of girl once money is put in front of them. They're Jews. They're up for it even when they don't look like this anymore."

"I cannot approach her with that sort of offer. You will pay me ten francs for this drawing?"

"I said it and I meant it."

"I would prefer fifteen." He dared not hold out for the twenty offered for the prospect of a bawdy picture, but he could not simply take the ten without a fight. The printer could not be permitted to take advantage of him so easily. Though he might see what could be done about some of his drawings of Lydie if a bawdy picture could really bring in twenty francs. Twenty francs to the man who drew the image, a franc per copy to the man who coloured it: Duret's bawdy pictures were very expensive propositions.

"It's a nice picture, but it isn't going to go in colour, and it isn't as if everyone in the damned country is going to buy it."

"That means you'll be producing the copies more cheaply and thus selling more of them. What is unreasonable about fifteen francs?"

"Do you know how to convert this into a plate? I didn't think so. I have to pay the engraver, which is as much as I'm offering you. So then I'll have spent twenty francs before a single copy is actually made. These will go maybe ten sous a piece. Maybe."

"Then you need only sell fifty to break even, after your printing costs," Feuilly quickly estimated. "If it is a nice picture, as you say, surely you can sell many more."

"No one is going to pay you more than ten. Take it or leave it."

Feuilly took it. He would give two francs to Mme Mirès, two francs to Ada, and that would leave him with six, half of which had to go to the shop to pay off the small credit account he had opened to get the paper. Three francs for all this trouble. "Are you serious about twenty francs for a bawdy picture?"

"Depends on the picture, depends on the girl."

"I may be able to get you something."

Three francs, he thought bitterly as he stepped back out into the rain. He tried to remind himself that it was more than a good day's wages, but he had spent more than a good day on his efforts. If he hadn't promised to pay the women, then he would have had seven francs, which seemed more appropriate. The men who did this sort of work were worth more than three francs.

As he counted his money out to the stationer, paying off his 2 franc, 17 sous debt, he realised he had been the fool, hiring two women because the first had not been as good as he had wished. Had he hired only one, he would have had five francs after his debt was paid. Five was a much nicer figure than three.

There was not enough profit for a real celebration, but Feuilly had his flask filled with decent brandy at a café he passed on the way to Mme Mirès' flat in the rue des Rosiers. Three francs would still ensure drink and the first hot dinner in a week for he and Laforêt that evening.

The concierge looked at him strangely when he asked if Mme Mirès were at home. "Don't know. You know where her room is; you can go on up."

He had never seen the concierge before, so her positive affirmation of his knowledge both confused and worried him. Had Babet described him to her as the decoy? Or was it assumed that anyone who knew a Jewess knew her extremely well?

Mme Mirès looked shocked to see him. "Monsieur! Should I invite you in? Please forgive me, I have but poor means of hospitality." Her room was very small, smaller than the jeweler's room. The bed took up most of the space, and it was covered in piles of the corsets she was working on. There was only a single chair. "May I invite you to have a seat?"

"I don't want to put you out, or cause trouble for you." He had forgotten how pretty she was – his pencil drawings could not compare to the flush of her cheek. "I've only come to pay what I owe you."

"You have sold the painting!" She was more excited than he felt, perhaps because he had led her to think him much better than he was.

"Not as a painting. As a drawing, to a printmaker. Drawings go very cheap."

"But you have sold something. It is a promising start, is it not?"

"A start only. But a start. Yes, a start!" Feuilly began to catch some of her enthusiasm. He had sold something! He had come up with an idea himself, put it together, hired models so he might best compose the image, and sold the result at a profit, even if that profit were smaller than he had wished. He had told Mme Mirès that he was an artist, and in truth, now he was. "It is a grand thing, isn't it, to sell something for the first time?"

"Yes. Perhaps one day you will be famous, and I will know that I was the first model."

"The first collaborator." He opened his hand to show the two francs he owed her. "I wish it were more, but cheap engravings don't pay much."

She stared at them for what felt an eternity. "Nearly two days earnings, and all I did was spend an evening standing still."

"You did more than that. I wish I could give you more."

Her fingers were cold as she took the coins from his palm. "Two days earnings for one evening of leisure. I am not foolish enough to want more. Thank you. I had not expected to see you again, to tell the truth."

"You did not think me honest enough to do right by you?"

"I thought you a Christian. Your people have no love for mine, and no thought of loyalty to us."

"And that means I could do no less than treat you as a queen. I cannot make up for all my race, but I cannot treat a stranger badly, whether she is Jew or Christian. The ordinary behaviour of men is not Christian in the least."

"I should never think you ordinary." She thanked him again, with an expression of finality.

"I shall not see you again, shall I?"

"It is best not. You are on your way, and I have had more than my due. I am content, but there is no future as I cannot be one of those women who count on artists for their livings."

He bowed goodbye to her and rushed down the stairs, past the concierge and out into the street. To stay longer would have been a temptation greater than he had ever had with Sophie, for a Jewess, no matter how honest, could never quite compare to a lady.

"Ada," he called, knocking on her door, "come out here and kiss me."

"Why the hell would I do that?" she asked, though she opened the door.

"Because I have two francs for you. I sold the drawing."

"Are you drunk?"

"Maybe."

She came closer and sniffed. "Liar. Can't smell a drop on you. Where are my two francs?" He held them out to her. "Two for real?"

"It's what I gave Mme Mirès."

"And did she give you a kiss for them?"

"No," he admitted.

"So am I sloppy seconds or does she think you don't like girls, either?"

"How am I to know?"

She did give him a quick peck on the cheek after he dropped the coins into her hand. "There, that get you excited?"

"Not really, but thanks for the attempt."

"Now go away, I have an order to finish before morning."

Laforêt was more demonstrably excited than Ada had been. "That is brilliant news! See, I told you you were bloody amazing."

"I didn't get paid all that much for it. And after paying the girls, it's hardly anything."

"Still, you've sold him one, so that means you could do another, right? And he knows you're good for something more than colouring in his bawdy pictures."

That night, huddled around their single candle, Feuilly showed him the couple of nude sketches he had done of Lydie. "Are these worth wanking to?"

"Who's the girl?"

"Clingy bitch I'm well rid of, but she posed well."

"You want the truth?"

"Please. Duret offered me twenty francs for a bawdy picture of Mme Mirès, and I'm hoping I can palm him off with someone else."

Laforêt gave a low whistle over the prospect of twenty francs. "I see the hope. I'm not sure I'm the help you want."

"Because your tastes aren't refined enough?"

"Exactly. For me, this is too much art. Nice breasts, I give you that. But when she gives me that come hither look, I want to see what I'm coming at, you know? But a twenty franc picture, that's got to be for gents with taste. And maybe they like it a little coy, you know?"

Feuilly had posed her like an Italian painting he'd seen in copy, a nude on a sofa with her hand curled over her womanhood, possibly about to play with herself. But Laforêt had a point – a truly bawdy picture, like what he had coloured for Duret before, showed the womanly parts in exaggerated detail. The sort of thing he could not attempt without a model, as he so rarely saw a woman's sexual parts. "That's exactly what I was afraid of. Thanks for the confirmation."

"Twenty francs, though. You realise with twenty francs, we could have a bed."

"Don't remind me," Feuilly groaned, looking at the pile of blankets in the corner. Had he not had to pay the girls, a mattress would have come home with him that very afternoon, the stationer's debt be damned.

"Good luck with it, though. And not just for my own selfish reasons." They toasted again out of the flask before turning in for the night.

Unfortunately, the next day, Ada had managed to rat on him, so that after a couple hours with Thucydides, Feuilly came home to Laforêt asking, "Why did you bribe a kiss off Ada?"

"Truth?"

"I think I should hear it."

Christ, you aren't still going with her, so drop the protective lover bullshit, Feuilly thought. "It was mostly a test to see how much she actually hates me. And I think I proved it was just a damned annoying act."

"I could have told you that."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I don't particularly want you too involved with Ada."

"Trust me, I know to keep my hands to myself. She's patently still yours."

That seemed to surprised Laforêt. "Really?"

"I give you until spring before you end up shagging her again."

"Really."

"I think her little act is how she thinks she's protecting you from me. And maybe protecting herself a little, what with two men on the same floor now and no one else, though some men might be annoyed enough with her insinuations to prove to her that they do, indeed, like women. But I try not to be an ass."

"Thank you. Until spring?"

"I'm sure you'll row again after that, but I'm neither blind nor stupid."

And if Laforêt still had Ada, and if this sale had been the first in a possible line of sales rather than a single fluke, Feuilly wondered if maybe, despite his recent past, he might be permitted to consider calling on Sophie after all.


	41. Chapter 41

"Zosia has found work," Pan Chrzyszczewski proudly announced to Feuilly one evening near the end of January. "Now will you dine with us?"

Even after Christmas, with its sense of God's forgiveness, Feuilly had not dared make a proper visit to the little flat so long as Sophie had been unemployed. The Chrzyszczewskis had gone from two incomes to one, and it had been a struggle for them to keep the flat all those months. Sophie had taken in some sewing, her father said, in an attempt to continue earning some bread, but so much of their income went to their countrymen's cause that Feuilly had dared not add his empty stomach to their bankroll. Pan Chrzyszczewski had not held a few weeks in jail against him or knew just how Feuilly had been keeping himself through the long winter weeks, but only the confidence from selling the drawing had permitted Feuilly to return to the café again, having proved to himself as well as to God that he was still worthy of the notice of honest men. And if he were honest, he had been glad of this invitation, even if he felt he ought to be circumspect about his own situation. He could not brag of his single triumph when she was still unemployed and he had no future prospects, and it would be no better if her new job was patently inferior to her work for Cartoux.

"What sort of work?" Feuilly asked, intending merely to extend the polite conversation.

"Decorating little things of papier mâché. Glove boxes and such."

"I am very glad." The work did sound particularly suited to feminine hands and Sophie's touch with a paintbrush. Perhaps, if he did join them for dinner on Sunday, he could share his fortune with them.

"You will dine with us on Sunday."

"I should be a very poor guest, pan."

"Nonsense. You will come."

Feuilly came. Pan Chrzyszczewski would not permit him to refuse, and he was eager to see Sophie again. It had been so long, and Christmas had been so unsatisfying when he was still so blackened with sin. And Feuilly was glad to hear that at least one of Aleçon's unintended victims had finally landed on her feet. He was still doing day work while contemplating just how to go about Duret's order for a bawdy picture.

When he arrived well after mass, having attended the service in his own parish rather than force too much of his eagerness on the Chrzyszczewskis, there was no fire, but the lamp was lit against the January gloom, and the little room was so homelike and welcoming it felt just as warm as if there had been greater comforts. "How do you like your new job?" was the first question he could think to ask Sophie after she bade him sit down. It was what had permitted him to make this visit, after all, and perhaps it could lead in to his own bit of luck.

But she shrugged and pulled a face. "There is so much gossip. The women told me that the girl who had my place left because she was to have a baby. It belonged to one of the men of the shop, and they have still not married. He still works there, and I think it a very shameful thing on all sides."

"Because he wasn't sacked and the girl was?"

"A woman with a baby cannot work, so she would have to go, married or no. But since they are not married, or to be married, I think it very shameful that he is not punished as well."

"Does he make a habit of using the girls in the shop in that way?"

"That should not matter. It is very wrong, whether it be the first time or the tenth."

"Perhaps they cannot marry," Feuilly suggested. "It can be hard to put all the papers together to do the thing legally." His papers had stood up to initial police scrutiny, but they would never suffice for a marriage license. Even if he had indeed been born in the town where the hall had burned, that fire would make it very difficult to prove his birth and marry legally. The sinfulness of the company he had kept for most of his life had not been the only reason Mme Pinon was the first married woman he had ever known.

"They should not have acted as if they were married, no matter what they might have thought their choices," Sophie insisted with all the firmness of her righteous Catholic convictions. "M. Cartoux would never have permitted such sinful behaviour in his shop."

"That is true," Feuilly agreed, a little sadly. "And we were all the better for it." He was far enough gone without having been permitted the fraternisation with Sophie he so craved, though he had known she would never permit it even before this outburst of moral rectitude, no matter how worthy he tried to make himself. "But is the work itself nice?"

"It can be," she admitted. "It is a larger workshop, four men making boxes and seven of us painting them. One of the girls does nothing but apply gold leaf."

"Very nice work, then."

"If only the workers were nicer. But what of you? Have you been keeping yourself well?"

"I work here and there. Yesterday, I was assisting a housepainter. I keep my eyes open, but there is only so much work to go around." Was it appropriate to mention his good fortune when she did not seem so happy about hers? "I had a bit of luck about a week ago, but nothing lasting."

"A bit of luck is something."

"I sold a drawing."

"A drawing?"

Why did she sound so confused? Did men not sell drawings? Or did sacked colourists not sell drawings? "A drawing. A printer bought one of my drawings. He'll make a couple hundred prints of it. Just like that." He pointed to one of the framed prints that hung on the Chrzyszczewski walls, a group of Polish noblemen in their odd native garb dancing with women in the ordinary European dress of a century ago.

"Truly?"

"Yes. Why would I lie about a thing like that?"

"I do not accuse you!" she exclaimed, looking profoundly sorry. "The prints – they are copies of famous pictures. I had not thought the printers would buy an ordinary drawing, no matter how good."

"It will sell very cheaply, I think," he tried to hedge. "He did not pay much at all." Why must she be skeptical rather than happy for him? Perhaps it was not such a great thing. Or was it like when he had a brief conversation with a gentleman at the Salon? He was grasping after a position higher than hers, grasping after something the nobleman's daughter could not manage to achieve. Did that make her jealous of his success or merely prejudiced against any notion of success for someone who ought to remain beneath her?

"Still, I am sure you are very pleased. It was a nice drawing, I am sure," she tried to mollify him.

"I called it 'A Modern Ruth'. Ruth coming to Boaz in the night."

"Oh, a religious picture. I am sure it was very nice, indeed." So had it been a thoroughly secular picture, she would not have approved? She had not been impressed with the English landscape, not compared to the altarpiece with its simpering Virgin. Perhaps that was all it was, her sense of his piety keeping him close to her and any deviation proving how little he did for her family.

"'A Modern Ruth', you say. I'm sure it was very nice. We shall have to see it when it is for sale," Pan Chrzyszczewski added.

"I do not know when M. Duret intends to produce it. He must have a plate made so it can be printed, after all. Perhaps for Lent?"

"An Old Testament story for Lent?"

"As an image of devotion different to all the Virgins and crucifixions that are everywhere. Maybe. I don't know what the market is, but he must think there is one since he bought it."

"I see. If it is nice, perhaps we shall buy a copy. I shall show it to everyone, to say 'I know this man'."

Feuilly smiled. Sophie may not have been as impressed as he would have liked, but he should perhaps have counted more on Pan Chrzyszczewski. "One might almost think you my proud father, pan, if you go on like that."

"I wish I had a son. I must rely on Zosia to marry well, and that is no hardship, but a son-in-law is not a son."

"Yet one can choose the son-in-law, ensure that he is dutiful and right-thinking, while when the son goes astray, only heartbreak can result."

"I have nothing but praise for my dutiful daughter, who has so far not married because she will not leave me for a Frenchman. But a son, to work for our grand cause. Ah, but I have my Zosia, and I have found you, who prove to all my friends I am a man of discernment."

Feuilly looked to Sophie, wondering how she felt about this outburst of disappointment at her very being, but she looked only at her sewing, giving away nothing of her feelings. Did Pan Chrzyszczewski give in to these flights of fancy when they were alone? If so, why did she not marry and prove her worth? Or was she not actually permitted to marry a Frenchman, which would require that she marry down in rank? Feuilly could not even think of himself as a possible suitor now, for she had completely disavowed the only sort of alliance he could promise, but there were honest, hardworking men who could put together the documents necessary to obtain a marriage license. Were her father's castles in the air more important to her than the legitimate prospects of happiness in her life as it would have to be lived? Had she been brought up to look for more in her life than the example of Mme Pinon: a good husband, a couple of children, the ability to educate those children, and the prospect of a long and decent life, even if it were filled with hard work? He, who knew he could never be a M. Pinon no matter how hard he tried, would give just about anything for that sort of life. How could Sophie disavow such chances merely because she ought to have been a lady? Cinderella laboured and was made a princess, so why should a lady not labour? "I am sure she will choose a worthy husband in her own time," he finally decided to answer.

"One always hopes for the best," Pan Chrzyszczewski agreed. He added some question to his daughter in their own language, which caused her to jump up and reply in the affirmative. "Dinner is ready," he told Feuilly.

It was a rather more meagre dinner than Feuilly had remembered, after all, and he felt sorry that he was so straining their resources. The soup had fewer pieces of vegetable than he remembered, though it did not take much beetroot to give it the bright, blood-like colour. A single ham hock for the three of them comprised the main dish, with copious amounts of sour cabbage to fill out the plate. They had fed him frequently on dumplings and cabbage rolls and once a thick stew they called _bigos_, and not once had he found cause for complaint in Sophie's cooking. Even now, though there was little to share between them, the flavour was excellent, some of their little money always going to spices he tasted nowhere else. Having spied on higher-class restaurants, he did at times wonder if the Polish nobility so often ate at the level of peasants rather than finer dishes of the Parisian upper classes he had seen and smelled, but it did not seem a fair comparison when the Chrzyszczewskis worked so hard for their meagre living. Sophie did far better things with cabbage than Viv's father had ever conceived – even the near-daily sour cabbage was far better. "I am sorry there is no kasza," Sophie apologised. "All had been milled into flour. The woman said she would see if she could get grains again."

Pan Chrzyszczewski sighed. "After so long, you would think she would remember. She does her best, I am sure. It is to be hoped you never must endure exile," he told Feuilly. "One misses the most simple things."

With Pan Chrzyszczewski in a nostalgic mood, and Sophie not as enthusiastic about her latest bit of fortune as might have been wished, it was not a very convivial meal. But it had been a true invitation, and a real view of the family rather than the public face they might have put on for another visitor. Even a poor visit was satisfying to Feuilly in that it was permitted, he was truly accepted despite his absence, despite his successes or failures. If Pan Chrzyszczewski's acceptance was all he could ever earn, it was still enough. A nobleman was proud of his ambition, after all, even if his daughter was not.

"You must come back for _T__ł__usty czwartek_. Fat Thursday," Pan Chrzyszczewski corrected, seeing Feuilly's confusion. "You have Mardi Gras; we have Jeudi Gras. Big party. Zosia will make _p__ą__czki_. Like beignets but better. Everyone comes. You, too."

"They will not be proper _p__ą__czki_," Sophie tried to explain. "I have not enough lard, so there will be some oil, and I have no _mak_ – oh, what are they? Red flowers. Poppies! I have no poppyseeds, so I must only use plums. My mother would be disappointed."

"I am sure they will be delicious all the same."

"You will come, then?"

"Since you wish it, pan."


	42. Chapter 42

"The girl isn't bad, but I need something better," Duret told him straight.

"Too much art, not enough sex?" Feuilly asked, certain of the answer.

"Exactly. I need cunts, not this fancy shit."

At least Duret deemed it fancy. "So if her legs were spread, you'd take it?"

"Here's what I want, if you get the girl back. Or a similar girl. Too bad you won't give me the Jewess, but I've had men bring me plenty worse than this little wench. Bed, sofa, I don't care what you've got in the way of furniture. Keep the composition tight to reflect that. Lying on her side like this is good, keeps her breasts pert. Let one leg dangle off the edge and keep the other one up so we get a full on view of her cunt. Open and detailed, I don't care if the view is wholly accurate or not as long as it feels possible. Understand?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"I want to get them printed by Mardi Gras."

"Yes, monsieur. I'll see what I can do."

Twenty francs. Twenty francs was a lot of money. Even if he had to spend three or four on a model, that still meant a mattress and perhaps some profit if he were lucky. But Mardi Gras was in two weeks – less if one counted the time to get a plate made and the prints run. The only chance at that twenty francs was to find Lydie.

Thus he found himself in the passage des Petites-Ecuries, trying to remember in which of the cramped houses he could find Lydie's flat. It had been in the middle of the row, and he could not recall what sort of shop had filled the ground floor. In embarrassment, propelled forward only by the prospect of twenty francs, he began knocking on doors, asking after Lydie Vincent, to absolutely no result. Maybe he was in the wrong leg, he decided, after four houses could tell him nothing, when he caught sight of a girl who looked familiar, possibly the seamstress to whom he had not been introduced the one time he had visited Lydie's flat. "Excuse me, mademoiselle!" he called after her. "Yes, you, mademoiselle!"

She stopped, confused that any stranger would hail her. Feuilly had to push his way through the passage to approach her closely enough that she could see that he had been the one to hail her. "So you come back after a year."

The prospect of twenty francs was a strong enough prod for him to ignore her combative attitude. He knew he deserved for this to be a failed errand. "I'm looking for Lydie."

"I figured as much, to see you back here. If you want to break her heart all over again, I won't be party to it."

"As if she has a heart to break."

"Just because she earns her living in a particular manner doesn't mean she isn't a woman! How could you possibly treat her the way you did and think anyone would let you see her?"

"How could anyone see the contempt with which she treated me and expect me to come back around here?"

"Contempt? She practically worshiped at your feet."

"Maybe to you lot. To my face, no ambition was good enough. A forger would have been better than a lawyer's clerk to her. Just because she's no good at earning an honest living doesn't mean she should treat me like dirt for the attempt."

"Can you get it through your thick skull that that was the whole problem? Everyone knew that if you went straight, you'd leave her behind. And then you did. How has that worked out for you?"

"If you think I'm crawling back, you're sadly mistaken. I've got a job for Lydie if she's willing. How much is she making these days? I can give three francs for an afternoon that doesn't involve sex. Only reason I'm here. Just a job."

"Well, she's not in, I don't think."

"Will she be back anytime this afternoon?"

"Maybe."

"Tell her I'll wait at our old cabaret until 5 o'clock if she's interested. Please," he begged. "I may not have seen her in a year, but I know she could use the money."

Feuilly knew he owed Viv money, even if she insisted otherwise, but so long as he left before sunset, he was certain he could avoid any of the rest of his former acquaintance. It was a risk that could end in one hell of a fight, but where else could he so easily direct Lydie? The old memories might be in his favour, and if not, then it could hardly go worse than a meeting in a more neutral location.

Viv was surprised to see him, as of course word must have gotten around immediately of his latest defection. "I didn't think I'd see you again."

"They won't do anything to me here."

"My father wouldn't permit it. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't do anything to you at all."

"I can look after myself," he told her with a smile. He knew all Babet's weak points, and Gueulemer and Demi-Liard wouldn't bother with him. No profit in it, so no point in exerting the effort. "How have you been?"

"The same. It's always the same. Do you want dinner?"

"No, just a glass. I worked yesterday."

"That's good to hear. At what?"

"Painting one of the new houses in the rue de Crussol."

"The shop needs a sign?"

"If only. I was assisting the housepainter. He's started teaching me about false finishes, which may help in future. Today was just painting the façade. But work is work, and it keeps me fed."

"I'll see that you're kept watered, then."

When she returned with a pot of wine, he warned her, "I should tell you that I'm waiting here for Lydie."

A warning indeed, for she looked devastated. "Why?"

"I have work for her if she is interested. It's just work, that's all. If she'll even speak to me, and I have my doubts as to that."

"I'm surprised you'll speak to her, after everything."

"I need her for this one job. That's all it is, work."

"Do you think she'll come?"

"If she could use three francs, and if she either absolutely despises me or doesn't care anymore," he lied. The only reason she would come, and endure this sort of favour to him, was if she thought she could get more than a bit of cash from it.

"Be careful."

"Because she'll scratch my eyes out?"

"She didn't bother trying to scratch mine out after you dropped her. But I know better than to trust her."

"So do I. But I need her for this job."

She did come, after Feuilly had read through two days worth of month-old newspapers. The Charter claimed to guarantee freedom of religious thought, and here the new king was pushing through his law on sacrilege. In a way, it was a relief to see Lydie so he might row over something that had nothing to do with politics. He had only recognised one of the men who spent their days drinking in the tavern, and any of the strangers could belong to the police.

She stood in front of him, arms crossed. "Martine said you wanted to see me."

"Sit. Do you want a drink?"

"Can you afford to buy me one?"

He put a couple coins down on the table. "Tell Viv what you want."

She came back from the counter with a pot of wine. "I heard you weren't doing so well for yourself." She had gotten harder in his absence, more harsh and flippant. Good, he thought. She wasn't going to last much longer if she kept finding men to cling to. When he left, it had been time for them both to grow up.

"Babet did me a favour, and I paid him back. That's all it was. Over before Christmas."

"Some favour, getting you out of jail."

"He didn't get me out of jail. The police finally realised they had no case to bring to a judge, so they let us go. Babet just loaned me some money to get me through, and you can imagine he prefers to be paid back in trade rather than cash."

"So you've got three francs to spare and think you can spend an afternoon fucking me?"

"As if I'd take you back to bed. This isn't you and me getting back together. I'm only here on business."

"You know what my business is."

"Remember I did some drawings of you a couple years ago?"

"You're still on about those stupid dreams?"

"A printer liked one of them, but he wants it more overt. I'll give you three francs if you'll spend an afternoon posing for me again."

"Three francs?" she asked, trying to hide her eagerness. The prospect of real money seemed to have settled her hash. Who could be cynical about three francs for a couple hours' very light work?

"But it has to be you. He was clear on that. He'll only pay me if it's the same girl I showed him. You. And it has to be in the next couple of days."

"You can really sell a drawing of me?"

"Only if the buyers can see your cunt, apparently, but yes."

"So it's one of those pictures."

"Is that better or worse than your beloved line of forgery?"

"It'll be my face and everything?"

"That's the deal."

"That's dirty."

"You're a whore!"

"I'm not registered!"

"Your part in this is legal, while streetwalking isn't. Think of it as advertising the goods."

She paused to drink down a large portion of her wine. Was she gathering courage, delaying the inevitable, or completely failing in her woman-about-town display, Feuilly wondered? Finally, she set down the pot with a bit of a bang. "No."

"No?" he asked incredulously.

"No. Three francs isn't really enough."

"It's worth three clients and I won't even touch you."

"I want five."

"No way in hell."

"Then you don't get paid either, so it's all the same to me."

"I can find another girl who'll take the three francs."

"Then do."

"Fine." He stood to go. What had been the point? He was almost to the counter, intending to pay a couple sous to Viv, when Lydie called him back. "You'll take the three?"

She looked down at her pot of wine, but she answered, "I'll take the three."

Which was all well and good, he realised, but he had nowhere to put her. He was not about to give her his address. She was still living in the overcrowded flat, so he could not go there, not unless he were to pay the other girls to vacate. At least a franc each, which would mean another three. He hated to do it, but Viv had rented a room before for even less. "How much for one of the rooms for an afternoon?"

"You don't mean it," she insisted sadly.

"It's just work. A couple hours, tops. You'll have the room again for the night, just change the sheet. Please. It's just a drawing, I promise, but I have nowhere else to take her."

"I'll do it for a franc," she relented, though the expression on her face made Feuilly feel a complete heel.

"Thank you. Really, thank you." He placed a couple of coins on the counter to pay for the wine they had drunk. "Tomorrow? The day after?"

"Just get it over with."

"Tomorrow around eleven." She waved him away. "Tomorrow, eleven o'clock, here," he told Lydie.

"Cash in hand before I take a thing off."

"Deal."

Where was he going to get four francs by tomorrow? He could pay it back once the drawing was sold, but he hadn't two francs left to his name. Still, Lydie was being remarkably good about the whole thing, and once it was all over, there would be a decent mattress and he could even pay Viv what he owed her from those weeks of dinners.


	43. Chapter 43

"Can I borrow a couple francs?"

Laforêt winced. "Why?"

"Lydie will let me draw her, but she wants cash in advance and won't do it for less than three."

"So that's her name?"

"Don't change the subject. Do we have two francs?"

"How long of a loan do you need?"

"A week, tops. Hopefully only a couple of days. I spend tomorrow drawing her, I clean up the sketches into a final drawing, I get my money from Duret."

"He won't give you an advance?"

"No," Feuilly sighed. "Says he only takes work on spec. An advance would mean a contract." It had been his first thought, partly to show that he could do exactly what the printer instructed, but Duret would have none of it.

"I suppose one does not want to feel beholden to the providers of bawdy pictures."

It had really gone far worse than that. "What happened to the ten I just paid you?" Duret had asked.

"I had to pay my models. And my debts."

"Then find cheaper models. Your expenses aren't my problem."

Feuilly had begged forgiveness and beat a quick retreat. He did not need to jeopardise the commission any further. Not that it even was a real commission, as Duret only took work on spec.

"When do you need it?"

"I'm meeting her at eleven tomorrow. Not here – I don't want her here, and I don't think Ada should see anything."

"I agree with you on that, but I haven't got two francs." He counted out a pocketful of small coins, reserving a few for himself. "Thirty-one sous. I'm only keeping five for myself."

"I promise you'll have it back inside a week. Hopefully within a couple of days."

"Look, don't put too much stock in these big payoffs. It's more gambling than work, isn't it?"

Laforêt had been excited about the first sale, and he had been the one to say out loud that this commission could get them a bed. Was his sudden negation because he no longer trusted Feuilly? Because Feuilly had asked for a loan of two francs? Because Duret only accepted work on spec and thus this commission was no commission at all? "The first one was an attempt to turn a profit on a job that otherwise would only have paid part of our debts," Feuilly explained. "And it worked. Sort of. Three of us ended up with money we wouldn't have had otherwise. And I didn't take up time that would have been spent looking for work. This one is promising a huge payout I know he's good for. I made a franc per copy colouring a special edition he ran last year. He sells expensive bawdy pictures if he can pay a franc a copy to the colourist. I'm not expecting to live off this sort of work, but I am willing to gamble four francs and some time for the sort of payout that will get us a bed. Then it's nose to the grindstone again. Swear to God. I know this won't last long enough to keep me in anything."

"Good. For a moment there, I thought -"

"You're starting to sound like Sophie," Feuilly interrupted. "I'm just scrounging money where I can find it, not getting above myself."

"I don't care what her ladyship says. I just worry too big a gamble will ruin us both."

Feuilly could respect a healthy self-interest. "Understood. Truce?"

"Truce."

Unfortunately for his plans, the temperature dropped far enough in the night that Feuilly woke before dawn, shivering, only to discover a thin veil of ice across their water bucket. He and Laforêt merged blankets in an attempt to get a couple more hours of sleep, though they had little success.

"You're going to get her naked on the coldest day of the year?"

"If she wants her three francs, hell yes. I can't put this off and still get him a picture he can print before Mardi Gras." Besides, the temperature could drop colder yet. It was only a very thin film of ice in the bucket, hardly enough to complain about in an ordinary year. They had simply been spoiled by the weather thus far, that was all.

Laforêt wished him luck as he left to look for work; someone had to bring home some ready money, as five sous would hardly last out the day. Feuilly took his time packing up his materials – drawing board, paper, pencils, and notebook. He bought a coarse bread roll and munched it as he walked, moving quickly through the huddled throngs of people. The cold had taken Paris unaware. Certainly Viv could be counted on to give him a bowl of coffee. Despite the frost, it was much warmer than the night Mireille had died. Perhaps it would not be so bad for Lydie, he hoped, but there might be much coffee drunk before the day was over. The remains of the roll he stashed in his pocket to serve as an eraser, though he was hungry enough to eat it all. He could afford to eat his fill once he sold this drawing.

The tavern was nearly empty when he arrived to find Viv sweeping half-dried mud from the floor. "Should I come back?"

"I don't know why I bother – it'll only get caked again, anyway." She motioned him in, so he did his best to stamp as much muck off his boots as the doorstep would hold. "Do you want breakfast?"

"Just some coffee if you've got it." He set his bag on a table and sat down heavily.

"You're really doing it."

"It's the first commission I've had since you, and it pays a hell of a lot better, so yes, I'm really doing it. He asked for Lydie, so he's getting Lydie if she co-operates."

"A commission?"

"Printer asked me, special, to do this. Like men do with real artists." He couldn't help smiling – it was so very real, and more than flattering, even if it were for a bawdy print he could never admit to in better company, under a commission his patron would deny if he did not like the drawing.

Viv understood, or at least he thought she did. "I am so proud of you." She took the broom back to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of coffee and milk for him. "Mireille would have been so proud. It's better than painting fans, isn't it?"

"It sounds better, but I'm sure I can't live on it. A real job would be better, still leave me Sundays for this sort of thing but pay me steady wages all through. But I think you're right that Mireille would have been proud of me. Is your father all right with me renting the room?"

"I promised you'd be gone before dark and we wouldn't need an undertaker."

"Unlike last time. Can I take a look?"

It was not the room in which Mireille had died, for which Feuilly was grateful. The bed was freshly made, and a straight-backed chair had been provided. Cold winter light streamed through the window. "I washed the window this morning," Viv told him. "Do you need anything else?"

"Sit on the bed a moment." Would the light be better if they shifted the bed to the other wall? "We're facing south, right?"

"Sort of."

With a broad gesture, Feuilly traced the direction the sun would move across the room. They could not put the bed opposite the window and still use the door, so the second-best solution was perhaps the one already taken. "It'll do. Have you got a bed warmer?"

"Why? Oh," she suddenly realised, flushing a bit. "I can give you the other room if you want a fire, but it's on the other side of the house, so I thought the light would be bad."

And it had too many ghosts for his comfort, he suspected. Just how many rooms with a fire could Viv provide? "You think of everything," he told her, following her lead in ignoring just what made the other room so inappropriate. "A bed warmer should do us just fine."

When Lydie arrived, late, Feuilly was nursing the remains of his second bowl of coffee in the main room downstairs. "Coldest day of the bloody year!" she complained.

"Do you want some coffee?" he asked half-heartedly.

"Are you treating?" she asked, perking up at the suggestion.

He flatly told her, "No."

"Then let's get this over with. Money?" she demanded with a grasping gesture.

He showed her a handful of coins but only counted out thirty sous. "The rest on completion."

"Fine," she sighed with annoyance. "Lead the way."

Feuilly did his best to ignore Viv's stricken face as they passed the zinc counter. Her very acquiescence, much less her active assistance, was heroic under the circumstances.

Lydie undressed quickly, hanging her shabby dress from the nail behind the door. "A little help?" she asked, tugging the string of her corset. As much as Feuilly did not want the temptation, he was gentleman enough to unlace her, noting a couple new repairs in calico since the last time they had been in such a position. Once she was free, standing only in her worn shift, she spun around and pressed against him, her nipples hard in the cold. "Come on. What are we really here for?"

But he closed his eyes to shut out her soft, begging face, and disentangled himself from her arms. He would not let her seductive voice get to him, not now. "We're here for just what I told you," he told her firmly.

With a huff, her shift came off and was thrown into a ragged pile on the floor. There she stood, naked and lovely as ever. Her nipples were perfectly erect in the cold, and it would be easy to ignore the red lines the wrinkles of her shift under her corset had made on her round, white stomach "Do what you want, then."

"Take your hair down," he ordered.

"Won't you help?" she pouted.

"No. How much time are you going to waste? You were already late." He had not expected Lydie to arrive on time, but even so, she had wasted some of the best light already. There were, however, a couple of benefits of doing this on a cold day, he decided as they finally got started. Her nipples stood to attention in a decidedly erotic fashion, but he had no desire to strip down and join her in bed. She had grown no better at posing, of course, and her scent in his nostrils as she spread her legs wide was dangerous, but she was too much herself, too much the needy girl he was still weary – and wary – of. It still only took a careful placement of his hand to trick her into following his lead, and only a glare to shut her up.

But she could only lay there uncovered for so long before she started shivering violently. Short bursts, Feuilly decided as she huddled under the blanket, rubbing herself to warm up. Even then, only part of her exposed outside the draped blanket at a time, it was a struggle for her to keep still. He gave her credit for trying and finally called down to Viv to bring hot coffee and a fresh bed warmer so he might let Lydie thaw a bit. The sun was moving too quickly across the winter sky, but he could not let her keep shaking so violently.

"Put some brandy in it!" she shouted down the stairs in Feuilly's wake, half demanding and half begging. Why not? Feuilly thought. It'll keep her quiet and she'll pay for it herself out of her three francs.

"I've missed this," she told him, huddled in the blanket, warming her hands on the bowl of coffee as he passed the bed warmer across the sheets. "No one looks at me like you did. No one ever did."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for that?"

"I'm just telling you I miss you," she snapped. "Martine wasn't very nice about your message."

"I don't blame her. I am glad you agreed to this," he admitted. He was fairly certain he'd never meet another girl as eager as Lydie to take her clothes off. And their past did make it easier for him to ask her to get into this sort of position, easier to see her and use her in this position. Who else could ever be glad to do him this favour?

"I'm glad, too." Some of her old sweetness had returned, her defenses dropped, or his, something, in any case, that was more akin to the tenderness of the last time he had sketched her than to the bitterness of their last meeting.

It was not so easy to get her back into position, however, and the sun continued its inexorable track through the street. It was late, indeed, by the time he admitted, "I need a close-up of your cunt."

"Does this mean I can get under the blanket? On the top, I mean."

"It means we're nearly done, yes."

"Thank god."

"It still has to be better than out there in this weather."

She shrugged. "It's not that wet today." But she gratefully tugged the blanket around her shoulders.

For the first time since he was a child making his first scrapings in the mud, Feuilly felt awkward as he drew. He had never conducted such a close examination of a woman's lower parts, and he felt Lydie's eyes on him the whole time. The thing could be reduced to geometry, a set of curves and angles, but he was so close to it, its smell filling his nostrils, that his angles seemed paltry, indeed, compared to the real flesh before him. Lydie was warm and round and pink and alive, while the drawing was cold and flat and grey as death. The whole drawing was of course only an approximation of the real thing, but here it seemed most futile, an abject failure not even M. Géricault could correct. And it would have to do, because no one could bring a rosy cunt to life in mere pencil and paper. Even the full depth and shining colour of oils in the hand of a master could create only a pale imitation of life, without warmth or scent.

"I'm done," Feuilly murmured at last, his mind still fixed on the impossible rosy entrance to the depths he once used to travel. "You can get dressed."

She sat up, closing her legs enough to take the complex organ out of his sight, but she pressed against him, forcing a kiss on him before he had enough presence of mind to stop her.

"What the hell?"

"You must be up for it by now," she said, her hands at the fall of his trousers. "All day looking and not touching?"

His prick was responding, but he gathered enough presence of mind to physically push her away. "Get off, get dressed, we're done," he ordered through clenched teeth. As he stood up, she tried again, with her most endearing smile, but he pushed her down on the bed. "I said we're done."

"I thought you loved me," she cried.

Hadn't they been through this before? Could she really think tears would work this time? He dropped a handful of coins on the bed, not bothering to count it. A slovenly Danaë in a shower of copper, the perfect idea for a grand painting if bitterness were ever to be translated into fine art. "Get dressed," he ordered, then he fled, his things gathered in a ragged pile in his arms.

Viv caught him on the landing. "You look spooked. Come in my room."

Feuilly had never seen the private places of the house. The kitchen did not count, as it was a necessary part of the tavern, the business, while Vivienne and her father had their own bedrooms and surely a sitting room to which customers would never be admitted. Viv's room was cramped and dim, with a couple of prints and his drawing of her confidence man pasted directly to the cheap wallpaper. It had a sort of warm fug, as if it were well-lived in but rarely aired, warmer by far than the room in which he had spent his day.

"She tried something, didn't she?"

"She was just her usual self," Feuilly admitted. "I was caught off guard, that was all." He smoothed his drawings and packed them carefully. "I expected it, really. I mean, why else would she have agreed? But she caught me off guard even when I knew better."

Viv sat beside him on the bed, a warm, friendly, soft presence. "There's really a buyer? You aren't just lying to yourself."

"There's really a buyer. No need for a ruse like this; I'm no confidence man. If I only wanted her back, I'm man enough to say so." He took her hand, rough with work but soft with fat, her knuckles making little indentations. "I'm man enough to say that right now, I want you." He pressed a kiss on her, and she did not resist.

He did want her, Feuilly told himself as they rolled over on the bed, as he lifted her skirt and she spread her legs. He wanted to show her that if there had been a battle, then she was the victor, that her kindness and patience deserved a grand reward, that she meant more to him now than Lydie ever could. It was not at all like sex with Lydie, for Viv did not fit so perfectly in his arms, but it was a nice change to pillow his face in her huge breasts, to see her eager face go red with pleasure, to feel her resistant weight responding to his thrusts rather than Lydie's willowy bend. He had known for a year and more that she would have him whenever he wanted, and he wondered why he had been such a gentleman so needlessly. Babet was right: she would hold nothing against him – not ambition, not talent, not failure, not success, not love.

Viv gasped her way through, unable or unwilling to vocalise her desire until she reached her own climax. At some point, she had torn the ribbon out of his hair, and now, his desire sated – the desire Lydie had sparked, if he were honest – he lay beside Viv, the two of them breathless, her fingers tangled in his loose curls.

"My father will kill you if he finds out."

"I have no doubt of that." But he laughed. It seemed so funny to think that the man could consider anyone a threat to his daughter's virtue after she had spent so many years serving this degenerate clientele. "Where is your father?"

"On his scrap run." She looked over at the clock, an oddly genteel piece in such a dive, and sprung up like the chime itself. "He'll be back any minute. You've got to go."

"Do I?"

"Please," she begged. They shared another kiss, but he threw on the rest of his clothes and hurried downstairs. He'd leave the money he owed her for the room on the zinc – he could hardly pay her directly after what they had just done.

Lydie was still there, drinking something she must have served herself from behind the unattended counter. Feuilly could not – and did not care to – hide his loose hair or the red mark Viv had left on his neck. "Bastard!" she snapped at him, keeping her distance as if to demonstrate her disdain. But it served her right, he thought, trying so hard, so ineptly, at something she knew she did not deserve. He tipped his hat to her as he left, determined to be the bastard she deemed him, but he felt her angry eyes on his back long after he had left the tavern behind.


	44. Chapter 44

"Do you want some advice?"

Feuilly was in Duret's office two days later, listening to the sleet hit the window as he delivered the finished drawing. The first thing he was going to buy with his earnings was a hot dinner, he had already decided; to hell with the mattress if it didn't permit dinner. "Please, monsieur."

"I see kids like you every damned day. Well, not quite like you. Usually, they're shopkeepers' sons from the provinces, certain they could come to Paris, apprentice with Gros, and become the next Ingres. They tend to have a modicum of training but no talent. You, on the other hand, have talent but no damned training. Do you know why this girl is better than that one?" Duret had pulled out A Modern Ruth to compare to the drawing of Lydie. "This one" - Lydie - "you actually drew the girl. On the other, you drew her clothes. Do you see what I mean? You've no sense of the underlying anatomy. Oh, your attempts are perfectly fine for the work Cartoux had you doing, I'm sure. Nothing against the man's taste, mind – at the scale you were working, these deficiencies are less noticeable. But if you want to sell any more figural drawings, you need to start studying seriously. You've got talent, and a good eye for composition, but you've got to do some serious study of nudes. Do you understand?"

Feuilly felt hollow, but he managed to get out a low "Yes, monsieur." He knew Duret was right; the deficiencies were all too obvious. He had never meant to set himself up as better than men with training, but he had been carried away by his ideas, by his inflated sense of his own abilities, and he had pushed bad work on a man who knew the difference between good and bad. He was a colourist, not an artist, and it had been terribly kind of Duret to have given him money for work that was too amateurish to really sell. It had been charity, not business. No wonder Duret had been so adamant against an advance – it would have been an admission that their informal contract was no contract at all. "You can keep the drawings. I don't expect anything for the new one."

"Don't be an idiot. There will be men lining up in the street to get a look at her. I'll go fifteen."

"I don't need your charity, monsieur, though I know it is kindly given."

"Charity? Are you listening to a word I'm saying, boy? You have eyes in your head, so I know you know Ruth is better than damn lot of what's out there. I can sell her cheap as she is and send copies out into the provinces, which is why I bought her off you. But I had a feeling you could do better, and I was right. Look at your other girl. Really look at her. This is good work. This, if we cover up the interesting part, is as good as I've seen boys with more training do. If you put some real effort into it, I might be interested in what else you can produce. I pay real money for real work. Ruth is only worth ten francs to me, but a better one, on a truly classical theme? I've gone as high as forty." Forty francs? Forty francs, just for the drawing, not even counting the printing plate? "Now I've got your attention, don't I? There's never going to be regular work in this line for you unless you can push yourself up to that level. And I think you can. But you've got to get yourself some real training and a lot more practical anatomy. A handful of lessons and a lot of drawing from life are all you really need. Do you understand?"

"Yes, monsieur. Thank you, monsieur."

Fifteen francs. It was not quite the twenty-franc work Duret had wanted, but it still meant a good week's pay for a day's work to Feuilly. And Duret's advice had been honestly given. No one without training could hope to compete for a living against men who had been taught what they ought to do. He had been groping in the dark, learning from finished work and his own notions of how to get there, so it was no wonder he had failed so spectacularly.

But what else could he do? Lessons cost money. He was too old and too poor to apprentice to anything now, regardless of how old artists' apprentices might be. He could keep fumbling along, perhaps find himself a new mistress once he had better work again, someone who would let him draw her over and over, but without guidance, would he just keep repeating the same mistakes? He could not even identify all his mistakes, just a certain stiffness at times, or a place where nothing seemed to look right. Instinct and close study of finished works had taken him this far, but he could see no way to go further. Not without money.

Laforêt was pleased to see his money back, however, and eagerly volunteered to help carry a mattress back to the flat. "If she was half as awful as you've said, you deserve to sleep well from now on." Feuilly was beginning to feel that he had put the most money into setting them up, while Laforêt still owed him for all the work Babet had demanded. Laforêt must want that mattress so badly so he might share it, Feuilly thought. But then, if he were more charitable to Laforêt, he had to admit that when Laforêt got work, it was often physically harder than even Feuilly's heavy lifting for Manoury, the housepainter. Hard labour and a hard floor made poor partners. Still, Laforêt had not made enough ready funds available to really deserve that mattress, despite the effort in helping carry it home. The agreed partnership did not feel very equal.

Nevertheless, Feuilly kept silent. It was an excellent room, one that would get better as spring and then summer came, and sharing the rent had kept him out of the flop houses. Laforêt would find a real position soon enough, Feuilly hoped, which would allow him to pull a little more weight, even if for now, he was sponging. The little projects that had kept them fed through the new year were too far in the past to count for anything now.

Except he wasn't deliberately sponging, as that night, the mattress ceremoniously installed directly on the floor as they could not yet afford a bedstead, Laforêt began arranging his blankets on the floor as usual.

"What are you doing?"

"Your work, your money, your bed, right?" Laforêt's tone was innocent, neither too perfect nor tinged with bitterness. He sounded completely composed, as if he believed that it was morally good and right that he sleep on the floor when there was a perfectly good bed right next to him.

"Are you sure?"

"It's fine. I swear. What idiot expects to profit off someone else's labour?"

"Will you just get in the damned bed?" Feuilly ordered.

Perhaps there was nothing really wrong with Laforêt, he told himself. A little dense, maybe, but then, maybe he was just quiet about knowing his place. Maybe he was too embarrassed to apologise for not having been the one to come up with more funds for their mutual use. After all, they had spent weeks eating off the proceeds of the work Laforêt found, even if it was Feuilly's money that paid the quarter's rent and was slowly furnishing the flat. And in the continued cold, it was warmer with the extra blankets and another body in the bed. Laforêt would have to do something soon, but Feuilly decided to let it slide for the time being. It was not as if the drawings for Duret could be called serious work, despite their outsized profit, and they both knew it.

Lying in bed with Laforêt, however, called to mind the equally heavy presence of Vivienne. What had possessed him to drag her further into the ruin he could not quite seem to leave behind? It was not that he had successfully pushed her out of his mind for the past couple of days; rather, he only now did not deliberately turn his thoughts in other directions. The work was done, the earnings spent, and now he had the leisure to think.

It was no good, what he had done. Despite the clientèle by which her father made a living for them, she had always been a good girl, a decent woman. Even if no one worth marrying wanted her, she worked hard and took her money honestly, even if it came to the customers in various dishonourable fashions. She was a good deal his senior, should have been married some time ago, and here he had done something that could drag her into the mud and render her permanently unmarriageable, far worse than her father's business or her unfashionable appearance ever could.

As Feuilly was drifting off to sleep, Laforêt turned over heavily, jerking him back to full consciousness. The last proper bed he had shared was with Lydie, and she barely moved. Perhaps that was her father's fault: if she remained perfectly still, did that lessen his interest? Whatever the reason, Lydie had been an ideal bedmate. It appeared Laforêt was not. Feuilly sighed inwardly and tried to settle himself back to sleep. Only then did he realise just what had been wrong about that afternoon with Vivienne. The books, the pamphlets, Babet's tales, they all said the same thing: a virgin should bleed upon her first time. Babet was often full of shit, but there was plenty of additional evidence for this claim. Yet with Vivienne, there had been no blood. There had been no sign of pain or discomfort, just her eager acceptance of his prick. She wasn't confused or frightened by the erect member, she had not bled, she had not cried out or even just grimaced in pain: she had exhibited none of the signs of virginity. Ergo, he had not been the one to ruin her.

The conclusion shocked him. She had not been so good and honourable and decent after all. He could have had her any time because someone else had already had her. Who was it? Who had convinced her to give up her only virtue? The confidence man? But he had gone to prison. Someone Feuilly did not know? But how could that be? Could it have been so long ago that she had been ruined while he was away, trying to better himself and failing miserably? She was old enough. It could have been.

It must have been, he decided. No one said anything, no one made veiled comments to her, it may not have been well known, but it must have happened then, when she was younger, when there might have been a reason even if she were hardly as conventionally pretty as many of the whores. She was better looking than the rest, and it paid a bill rather than leaving one to come due.

And if it were the confidence man, what did that matter? Was he jealous of a man in prison? How could he be, when she remembered that man only through Feuilly's labour? She could not look at that drawing without thinking of the artist as well as the subject. It was not his best work, more awkward even than his worst sketches of Mme Mirès, but it was his, and Vivienne would never forget that. Now she had had them both, artist and subject.

If not even Vivienne was innocent, what good was any part of his past? Mireille had lived though the war, and he did not hold her choices then against her, but she had pushed Lydie on him. Lydie was a lost cause the moment she had decided that since she could never do any honest work, he should never make the attempt himself. The men were all incurably criminal, having deliberately given up honest trades in order to embrace the excitement and subversion of lawbreaking. But Vivienne had seemed so good in the middle of so much that was bad. He should have realised long ago that no virtue could survive that pit. His own had not. But he had to eat; she was housed and fed on her honest labour. All she had to do was keep her legs together. Surrounded by whores, and with no mother to shame her, even that simple act was beyond her powers. He could never look at her in the same way again.

How could sweet, kind, loving Vivienne turn out to be so common after all?

_T__ł__usty czwartek_ soon came, and Pan Chrzyszczewski's flat filled with his noisy fellow exiles. At least here, there was virtue in abundance. Feuilly almost immediately slipped away to the kitchen, following Sophie as she returned to fry the last batch of dough into the traditional _p__ą__czki_, very like the beignets he knew well from street sellers but made with a heavier dough. Much of Sophie's cooking, where it could be compared to the cheap restaurants he knew, was heavier or spicier, designed to fortify the body against those hard northern winters where cold winds rushed across the snowy plains.

"Do you miss your mother at holidays like this?" he asked, trying to make conversation as an excuse for having followed her. Holidays seemed to cause so much work for women, and he had never seen a Polish woman other than Sophie. Even today, her father's friends did not have wives or daughters with them. Did old traditions make the work more or less bearable, more or less lonely? Mardi Gras was a public holiday, the traditions widely shared among rich and poor, but the privacy of Christmas had often saddened him by his exclusion from the more secular joys. He could not help wondering how Sophie felt at a festive season, as they had not been permitted to share Christmas.

Sophie did not look at him as she answered, instead concentrating on the balls of dough she was carefully placing in the pot of hot fat. "I miss her all the time. But I missed her when she was alive and I lived with Panna Mariśka, so it is not so bad. Life is what it is, so I cannot go wishing for it to be otherwise."

"Like your father does?"

"Like I wish you would not do," she finally addressed him directly. But she immediately turned back to her work. "My father does not like the great changes at home, and he simply wants to return to a life I am too young to know. It is not my place to say if he is right or wrong. Suppose we can return; suppose he does get a bit of land back. We shall all still work. My mother worked hard her whole life. I have worked hard my whole life. I loved Panna Mariśka, it is why I cannot bring myself to think of her as Panna Massalska as I should, but I was paid to love her. There is no castle waiting for us at home."

"What is waiting?"

"Nothing. If all went as my father wanted, he might trade his vote for some land, but he could never trade it for good land, land with a village on it. There are many men like my father, and no magnate will give up a village to one, as the rest will have to be given villages, too. We have our blood, and the respect that is due us, but nothing more," she said bitterly.

"Do you like it better here, then?"

"Here, I paint little boxes all day and come home to look after the house and feed all comers. Not you – I don't mind you," she corrected herself, looking up to give him a very charming smile. "I think you are very good. The others, I do not think they are so thankful. But at home, if we had our land, I would spend all day looking after the farm, then all night looking after the house. Here, I doubt I shall ever marry, as I want none of those who eat up my father's hospitality. At home, I doubt I should do any better, as the only offers would come from men as poor as we are."

"And that is all you consider in marriage? The wealth of a husband?"

"Why do you sound shocked? It is the way of the world, that we may only love those who are our equals, and we must do the best we can in that. There is only sadness when we fall in love with our betters."

"And your father would never permit you to marry a Frenchman," Feuilly reminded himself aloud, telling himself that she was not intending to lecture him on the folly of falling in love with her. But who were her betters? Who were his betters? She was too kind to condescendingly lecture him on a feast day, he told himself. But it was something of a warning from master to peasant, even if she would deny it. In Poland, perhaps blood mattered, but not in France. Murat was an innkeeper's son, and he became King of Naples. Who was better than a king? He should never have been King of Naples, that was a position for a Neapolitan, but that was not the point – an innkeeper's son had been permitted to earn promotion through his acts, not held back by his blood. Lannes, too, had very low connections of some sort, had been apprenticed to something. They had proved themselves better than the men around them, of all social ranks all across Europe. And then they let everything collapse so that no one could follow them in the future. But the great Revolution had permitted the acts and dreams of, if not labourers, then at least people not so different in situation to Laforêt. Napoleon's wars had restored her own country, and she might have disdained the men who did it had she considered them carefully. But she was so caught up in her own trials and sorrows on a feast day that surely she was not considering there should be no betters if a worker could become a duke. Even the new king had not taken away the titles granted by Napoleon, and that meant that what had happened before could happen again.

Sophie shrugged as she pulled the finished _pączki _from the oil. "Perhaps he may change his mind. But how can I leave him? When I left my parents before, to work for Panna Mariśka, I had not left my country. But when we all had to fly, I left Panna Mariśka, for one must have one or the other, family or country. Otherwise, one is all alone in the world. How can I leave my father all alone in the world? Any man who seeks to marry me must see that much. But now you must leave me alone now to finish these in peace. The kitchen is no place for a young man on a feast day," she tried to finish in better humour, forced as itmay have been. But she put a fresh _pączek_ into his hand as she chased him out.

Feuilly returned to the party, his small amount of holiday spirit thoroughly drained even as the sweet and tart redcurrant conserve at the centre of the _p__ą__czek_ lingered on his tongue. What good was attempting to have a proper conversation, not even a flirtation, if she was simply going to insult him without realising what she was doing? She never asked after his family – was he not good enough for that consideration? She did not even know how completely he lacked a family.

A well-dressed man was making his goodbyes to Pan Wojciech in their native tongue. He had not been present when Feuilly slipped off to see Sophie, so his visit to this poor flat must have been brief. The Polish "little water" had begun to flow, and Feuilly felt a tap on his shoulder. The student, Bahorel, had turned up, and was pressing a glass of the clear liquor into his hand.

"Did you see the Prince?" he asked.

"Was that who just left?"

"Massalski himself. Don't you think he should be hosting this sort of thing instead of just providing the firewater?"

"So that's how the _wódka_ appeared." He took a huge swallow, wincing at the burn in his throat. "So were you invited, or did you follow the Prince?"

"Invited. I'd managed an invitation to Massalski's salon once, so I figured I'd come around to see how the real Polish patriots live."

"Massalski isn't real?"

Bahorel shrugged. "He does better in exile than his countrymen, so I have my doubts."

"You're just here to catch a glimpse of Panna Zofia."

"Maybe," he agreed with a smile.

"She won't have anything to do with you. You haven't got noble blood, either, do you?" He finished the glass and started looking around for the bottles or barrel or whatever might hold more liquor. Bahorel must have noticed because with a nod of his head, he beckoned Feuilly to follow him to the other side of the crowded room, where the barrel stood hidden by a cluster of partygoers.

"Did she tell you that?"

"Not ten minutes ago." Let her come out now, to see him chatting with another student in her own flat. It was not for him to turn France into Poland just to soothe her nerves. Perhaps his audacity would make her feel better about rejecting him, even accidentally, on a feast day.

"So you finally decided you wouldn't let so-called nobility be an obstacle."

"I just wanted to see her alone for a minute. Didn't say anything other than ask if she missed her mother. Not a word of what I might feel. She started warning me off with talk about not falling in love with your betters. At first, I thought she was talking about her father, well meant, you know? He's playing at the bountiful lord right now, and they can't afford it. She only wants to marry if there's money in it. I wanted to make sure I heard right, as that would make her even sadder than she is, and she turned on me with this talk of not falling in love with your betters. Our nobility isn't like their nobility. What did Marshal Lannes apprentice to?"

"A dyer, I think."

"How much lower in class can you go and still become a duke?"

"So she's a duchess, and if you married her, you'd be fulfilling your notion of a mobile hierarchy?"

"Pan Wojciech has no title. Titles in Poland come from foreign governments, either kindly meant as a reward for service, like if Marshal Poniatowski had been made a duke, or as a way the occupying force buys off the magnates. A real Polish patriot has only his surname and the benefit of being addressed as 'pan' to prove his rank." So Feuilly had learned from Pan Chrzyszczewski himself. "She's lonely and worked to the bone for nothing, and it's terribly sad that she disdains the very men who make things happen simply for wanting something more in life. Is there something wrong with wanting the future to be better than the past rather than a replica of it? What's wrong with wanting something?" He was annoyed at the Chrzyszczewskis, who could turn a polite inquiry about the consequences of a death in the family into an opportunity for a lecture about the meaning of nobility, but he was also curious what a bourgeois student would have to say about it.

"Nothing. Hell, if no one wanted anything in this world, we'd still be in the mire of lords and serfs. Like they are. Give me the grasping bourgeois or the thrifty farmer over fossilised aristocracy or peasants any day."

"Sophie said something odd at the beginning of all this. They have to be noble because Pan Wojciech has a surname and is addressed by his comrades as 'pan'. If he were just a servant, they would know, and they wouldn't be calling him 'monsieur'. But something doesn't really make sense. Because it isn't just Pan Wojciech who works for Prince Massalski – Sophie did, too. She said something like she lived with that family and she was paid to love someone called Panna Mariśka, his daughter or maybe a niece?"

Bahorel motioned to a young man in flamboyant trousers and a shabby coat whom Feuilly had never seen before. "What's the deal with our host?" he asked.

"Pan Wojciech? He is one of the Prince's lackeys," the man answered in heavily accented French.

"I mean in Poland. Who was he? What was his condition under the Duchy?"

"Oh, that. His father was what we call _hreczkosiej_. Good blood, no money, no serfs, only a field or two. But at least his father had land, even if he worked it himself. That went on his death, to pay off debts. Pan Wojciech became _go__ł__ota_. Landless. But still _szlachta_, noble, still one of us, even if a poor brother. We are not all Massalskis." His French was hard to understand, but he produced it fluently.

"What is your rank, then?"

The young man shook his head. "It isn't rank. Not like your nobility, where Duke is higher than Baron and one ascends only at the will of the king. Status, perhaps? No nickname so colourful as those of the lower _szlachta_. Middling, perhaps. We have a couple of villages in the Austrian portion. _Galicja_, they try to call it, as they conscript our peasants for their wars and pretend that _Polska_ has never existed."

"The daughter worked for Massalski, too, I think."

"Ah, Panna Zofia. If she had land, she would have married already. If she were at home, even as _go__ł__ota_ she would have married already, possibly to someone with a little something as she has attainments. No townsman, of course, unless he has already been favoured with brotherhood, but she would not be left rotting on the vine as she is now. The Prince took pity on them for some reason, some connection with Pan Wojciech's unlucky father, I think, and hired Panna Zofia as companion for his younger daughter, Panna Maria. She died before the Prince went into exile."

"Was Panna Zofia a companion or a maid?" Feuilly dared ask. "Companion" was what the ladies in the novels and sometimes on the stage had. They spoke well and dressed nicely. A maid, on the other hand, was he sort of work that the ordinary daughter of a farmer without land would be offered, the sort of work that Lydie was patently avoiding.

"A little of both, I should think, in the end. Still, she had all the same lessons – French, music, drawing – and that should have made her a more attractive marriage prospect. Not to a great magnate, no matter how much we are supposed to be equal brothers. But she is pretty, and she has some education, so that even without a dowry, someone with a little land or a little money might want her. But who is going to marry her here, beauty or no?"

"Maybe a Frenchman," Bahorel said.

The young man laughed. "They may be _go__ł__ota_, but they are still _szlachta_. Blood is everything."

Bahorel thanked him, but after the man left, he muttered to Feuilly, "Blood is everything? God help them."

"Do you mean that?"

"Of course I do. Kalinowski fits M. Albert better than some of their other associates. Some are thorough-going liberals. Kalinowski thinks himself a great liberal for not demanding to be called 'His Grace'. Massalski attracts all kinds, some sort of penance for his father's mistakes. Which is why it's hard to tell just how serious he is. Everyone gets money, liberal or conservative, so long as they speak of a united Poland. I prefer the liberals, though there are so few of them here. Understandably, as it is M. Albert's party"

Sophie finally appeared with her tray of _p__ączki_. "There you go, Monsieur," Feuilly pointed her out. "Her ladyship who says we cannot fall in love because I haven't the blood."

"Oh, damn," Bahorel approved. She did look very pretty, her cheeks flushed from the stove, her eyes shining with festivity now that the bitter, isolating work was done for the moment. "No wonder you're gone. Do you think M. Albert will let me sit at his feet to stare at his daughter?"

"She won't marry a Frenchman."

"Then I won't marry her."

"You heard Pan Kalinowski: she is a lady, landless servant or not," Feuilly snapped at him. There had almost been an equality of conversation for a moment, but one could never fully take the mastery out of the bourgeois when a poor woman was involved. Mme Mirès, Panna Chrzyszczewska, it was all the same. Honest women were never respected by the wealthy.

"I just meant to look, that's all. Wouldn't dare touch. There's probably some ancient rite for slaying peasants who make unwanted advances, and I'm closer to the farm than you are. Much closer."

"Ah, monsieur!" Pan Chrzyszczewski suddenly greeted them. "Have you met my daughter? Zosia! Come greet M. Bahorel!"

Feuilly bid the student a rather bitter good luck then slipped out rather than witness the introduction. He did not want to know if Sophie would greet the student as an equal or if she accepted that in France, he was her superior. He did not want to see Sophie bow to anyone as her superior. He did not want to see Bahorel look at her fawningly or lasciviously. She deserved better, even if better could never mean himself.

Even her father's associates felt she was ill-used. Her status was unfortunate: she had no other family to argue with her father on her behalf, and perhaps she would still follow her father out of loyalty or love if she were presented with a real choice between a new family and the old homeland. She had an education, but only as an afterthought, as a maid for the wealthy child of her father's patron. And now she painted papier mâché boxes until someone of her own country and her own class would deign to marry her, someone whose blood she could respect and who did not think her an old maid.

What could her condescension or affection for him mean when laid against duty to father, class, and country? If she so deeply felt she must live in the world as she saw it, then the least he could do was honour how she chose to live. She was not for him if she could not believe in dreams, but she was like most of Paris in that. She accepted her poor place and did not dream of castles, and perhaps that made her even more a Cinderella. She deserved a prince to show her another way to live, not an unemployed fanmaker. He would not push his ambitions in her face again. Even if she did not much respect him, she did like him, and he could best prove the innate nobility of the dyer's apprentice and the unemployed worker by behaving as a gentleman and refraining from further discussion of his dreams, not to win her approval but to offer her solace through his silence.


	45. Chapter 45

The penitential season was in full swing, and Feuilly might as well have been fasting for the good of his soul as the strictest abstinence had been thrust upon him. Work was slow, but Mme Duzan had lowered her prices so that he spent nearly every afternoon in her reading room, buried in the ancients as the present was doing him little good. Unless he could find a new girl, he would get no more work from Duret, and he could not hope to attract a new mistress without money. His possible art career was already aborted. He was back to hungry mornings in the cafés and afternoons disappointed in the single poor meal a day he had eagerly grasped at noon. But at least his nights were more comfortable, even if Laforêt sometimes thrashed around in his sleep.

Having quickly exhausted Thucydides, he was back at the café, determined to stick to newspapers and the possibility of work for the rest of the week. He was nursing a glass of wine, hoping it could last all morning, chatting with Manoury about the meaning of the generals who had gone to Egypt to lead the fight against the poor Greeks. Did we not have the duty to support the Christian nation if the king were so adamant about his own religion as to push through the anti-sacrilege law?

As they talked, the café owner came out from behind the zinc, where he had been in conversation with a man about his own age. Feuilly paid little attention, though he had not much seen the café owner on this side of the zinc. There was no reason for him to care that the man moved more than a couple of steps, his belly jiggling as he crossed the floor. But it was at his table that the café owner stopped. "This one," the fat man jerked a thumb at him.

His companion was about half his size, his whiskers gone grey. "Feuilly, right? I was told you paint." He had a southern accent, more Gascon than Provençal, rather like Bahorel.

"I do," Feuilly responded warily. This was how work was picked up, but it seemed more serious now that he was the one approached. He had never before merited an approach, Laforêt or the housepainter bringing him along as an assistant or a second pair of hands after the boss had contracted with them for the day's work.

"I don't mean house painting."

"That's Manoury here. Figural, landscape, botanical, I'm your man." He tried to sound more certain than he felt.

"What was your last regular employment?"

"Colourist for Augustin Cartoux. He made fans. Went out of business in October after promising me a promotion to miniaturist."

"But you never worked as a miniaturist."

"I did some work, just not regularly," Feuilly corrected. "I've coloured prints, too. For Jean-Michel Duret, in the rue St-Marc."

"He might suit," the man told the café owner. "Thank you." A coin of payment was handed over, and the owner went back to his usual station behind the zinc. "My name is Lapeyre. Have you any experience with wallpapers?"

"I know watercolours and paper."

"It'll have to do. I need someone with a good eye and a careful hand. You're young enough: are your eyes good?"

"I should think so."

"Thirty sous a day to make corrections to the rolls."

"Agreed." A set salary rather than piecework? He was going to be worked to death for his thirty sous, but it was work, and a guaranteed wage.

Manoury wished him luck as he followed M. Lapeyre. Lapeyre's workshop was in a long, low building some distance north of the café. The workshop was a single large room the entire length of the building, with windows all down both the street side and the courtyard side. It might have been purpose-built, but it certainly looked older than M. Lapeyre. Perhaps he had taken over a previous concern. Long tables ran between the windows, spaced to give enough room for men to work between them. A crash startled Feuilly – it was merely a woodblock landing too hard on the table. "Watch what you're at!" M. Laypere shouted at the men managing the block. Others, more careful, landed their printing blocks with a low thud. "The rolls are printed in colour," M. Lapeyre explained. "You'll look over the printing, and if the blocks weren't aligned perfectly, or if there's a flaw, you'll fix what you can."

"I get thirty sous a day so you don't lose the sale of less than perfect rolls?"

"That's it precisely. My man's out with a broken arm; if you're satisfactory, you can stay until his hand is back to normal."

"A month, more or less?"

"Probably two. His wife came to me yesterday."

Lapeyre was not much like Cartoux – he had a harshness to his voice and demeanour rather than the gentility Feuilly thought he saw in the fanmaker – but Feuilly was pleased to hear this expression of loyalty to his workers. Work for a month or two was a godsend, particularly at thirty sous a day, and if the boss held a job for one of his men, surely he would put in a good word for Feuilly after Easter, when he would again be forced to go looking for new work.

The work for most of the men was heavy and not artistic in the least, Feuilly discovered as the morning wore on. The wooden blocks used for printing were heavy, and while they were swung about on ropes and hoisted with pulleys, it took muscular effort to mitigate the effects of gravity. There was a girl, small and silent, who mixed the colours, and she brought him small dishes of the shades used in the pink and green and white floral pattern he was to examine. Lapeyre had left him a magnifying glass, as well, which was momentarily fascinating. He needed a man with good eyes, yet he had provided this expensive glass that could so easily show the grain of the paper when held at the correct distance. But Feuilly's interest quickly faded as he found the grain of the paper to be more distraction than aid.

It was hard work for his thirty sous. The close inspection, even in the best light that a hanging lamp and the wide windows could provide, had him rubbing his eyes. He had expected printer's ink, or at least a thin paint close to the watercolours he had always worked with, but the paints for wallpaper were thick and opaque, requiring a different touch between brush and paper. One of the flowers in the block had a slight deformity, a chip in one petal, that he found he had to correct in each impression down the whole long roll. Once his corrections had dried, the long roll was printed a second time, in another colour, so that the flowers would be given green stems and vines twining across the page. Each roll had to dry for several hours, so these rolls of pink flowers represented the previous afternoon's work. Pink flowers, over and over, for him, while they added green vines upon green vines, roll after roll.

The men who had dropped their block were working at a simpler design, a marbled pattern that would require no correction. A nick in marble would never be noticed. An older woman and the girl hung the finished rolls across a clothes line high above the floor to dry completely. The drying rolls closed off one end of the long room like a half-finished screen or heavily faded curtain. Lapeyre was on his feet all the time, walking around the printers at work, examining the printing carefully, leaning over Feuilly's shoulder on occasion, which terrified Feuilly. What if Lapeyre found a flaw he thought obvious that Feuilly had never noticed? But not a word was said to him.

All the morning, the rhythmic thud of the blocks accompanied Feuilly's squinting labour. After that first roll, he knew where the flawed flower lay in the block, but every flower had to be examined just in case. A hair or a speck of dust could create just as much havoc with the design. The men did not work in silence, but it was not a gossipy workplace, he thought. It was not so much the hum of conversation as the rhythm of hoists and drops, not quite sung the way the men on the river would sing to pull the oars or hoist an anchor, but a streetseller's patter in a low tone. Conversation might throw the timing off, Feuilly decided. Looking up to rest his eyes a moment, he watched the process through. A block was twisted upright, inked with a sponge full of paint, then swung into place and dropped with a low thud, the paper pressed between the table and the block. Two men with a heavy roller would push it across the block to firmly set the design to the paper, then the block would be hoisted, inked, moved into position, and thud to the table again to be rolled. At one point, the rhythm broke, one of the men shouting, "Adèle! Pink 48!" The girl came running with a new dish of paint, and the printing continued.

Midmorning, the work suddenly stopped and men began to file between the hanging rolls and out the door. "You're not going?" Lapeyre asked Feuilly.

"What for?"

"To drink your breakfast like the rest."

Another glass of wine would certainly go to his head and make it impossible to keep up the careful work he had been hired to do. "I should rather keep working, monsieur." While it would never do to lie outright to impress the boss, a true statement of preferring not to be stuck buying a round of drinks for strangers, as Laforêt had once warned him would be the case, could hardly go amiss.

"Go rest your eyes for few minutes, then," Lapeyre ordered. "You'll not get another chance until noon."

The air outside was no less chill and damp than it had been a couple hours earlier. Feuilly had not realised just how much the small stove in the corner, where the girl mixed her paints, had heated the whole huge room until the fresh air of the city made him shiver. Morning was advancing more slowly than the clock would suggest. The men had taken themselves to a dingy café down the street; Feuilly could see one of them waving to him, but he stared off into the distance a bit longer before looking away, trying not to seem to deliberately cut the stranger. It might have been a friendly gesture rather than a grasping one. The women had gone in the opposite direction, to a coffee seller. Feuilly hoped the coffee seller would still be there in a couple of hours, as it would be best to wait for midday to spend a sou on one of the acrid bowls. A bowl of coffee and a piece of bread would stand him in greater stead than a pot of wine.

He leaned against the corner of the building, looking around. A cart came up the cross street, laden with barrels. He could hear the metallic ring of a blacksmith somewhere not far away. The streets were not well-peopled at this time of morning, the workers all busy with their work and the neighbourhood too industrial and out of the way for anyone who did not work there. The cart had come through the barrière just north, perhaps bringing wine, for any marketer would be heading back after his early-morning sales, not arriving in the city so late. To a wine merchant he must be going, Feuilly decided.

The women were watching him, he feared, as he glanced in their direction again. Were the men wondering about him as well? He could hardly afford the required pleasantries, and his empty stomach was not the place to drop a friendly pot of wine or shot of brandy at the moment. He would have to accept hospitality at the end of the day, to run up credit at the café in apology for his poor manners this morning. What did hospitality matter if he were too drunk to keep the position that required such a gesture? And as for the women themselves, what must they be saying about him? Ada had him spooked. While he got on perfectly well with men like Manoury, relations with Ada seemed unlikely to ever improve. Perhaps men liked him for the same reason girls like Ada never took to him: so long as he seemed slightly outside the normal life they were used to, he was no competitor in that life. If only it were true. How much easier must it be to be the slumming bourgeois he hoped he was sometimes taken for than to be what he was in truth. Mme Mirès had liked him well enough in that guise, after all. Not that he was anything to these women, with one old enough to be his mother or worse. As for the young one, she was more likely another Ada than another Mme Mirès.

The women returned first, not looking at him as they walked past, as if they had looked enough and need not risk being detected in their observations. He followed them back into the workshop, and the men returned a few moments later, their conversation suddenly filling the shop with noise. But the rhythm of work was soon taken up again, as if it had never paused.

The first sheet of green vines over the pink flowers was brought to him just before the workers all walked out for their midday break. Feuilly followed this time without being asked, but he turned the opposite way, through the street now well-populated with others on their midday breaks, to the coffee seller. Her product was acrid and weak, as he had expected, with the milk watered as well as the coffee, but it was warm, and the weakness made it go down more easily. "Where might a person get a piece of bread?" he asked.

"Baker in the rue Martel. Next street over," she explained to his look of confusion. The rue Martel was narrow, the way filled by the emptying of a wineshop by the men of another enterprise ending their midday break. The baker was just down the way, and Feuilly was able to get a chunk of dry black bread for his sou, not large enough to do much, but it would keep the worst of the hunger away.

On his way back to the workshop, one of the other men caught up to him. "You going to ignore us all day?"

"At the end of the day. I swear," Feuilly apologised with what he hoped was a somewhat ingratiating smile.

It must have worked, for the man offered his hand. "Thomas Quinot."

"Daniel Feuilly."

Nothing more was said, though it appeared Quinot spread the word to everyone, as they all found an excuse to look at him in the course of the afternoon. Another short break for drink was taken around three, but Feuilly just sat on the floor and rubbed his eyes. It was hard work, quite as hard as his first day with Cartoux though he did far less painting here, and it only got worse as the afternoon lengthened to evening. The green block had no flaws that Feuilly could see, but the men had manged to set it a hairsbreadth out of place a couple of times, requiring that he fill in the tiny gap with just enough green that the seam would go unnoticed.

After the greens were complete, a brown block would be applied to give subtle definition, less crisp and thus less glaring than the black outlines a printer of images such as Duret might use. These outlines set the work, giving Feuilly the final frame to which he must make the pink and green match. Then he would have the option of a white paint should it become necessary. Four dishes of paint, all mixed to numbered formulas. But this was explained to him as work for the next morning, as there would not be time to let the first prints of that final block dry enough that he might add his corrections without smudging the printing.

They were released from printing sometime after six, after the sun had sunk so far behind the buildings that the south-facing windows no long received even a hint of light. He had been working by lamp for the past hour, the sounds around him changing with the accompaniment of the women rolling the morning's dry marbled sheets off the lines. They left lines full of wet sheets, which would be rolled or finished in the morning, but the tables had to be cleared and wiped down, the brushes and paint pans and printing blocks washed, the mixed paints sealed up in pots so they could begin with the same colours the next day. Bending over the water basin in which he could wash his brushes, Feuilly had a chance to examine the girl, who was washing the paint off her stirring rods. She was not as young as he had thought, perhaps a bit older than he, and rather plain, with a smattering of freckles across her thin cheeks. Her hands were stained with green and brown and blue pigment, and a lank lock of brown hair had escaped from her cap, hanging in her eyes. She hardly looked at him, intent on her own work, and she was really not worth looking at long herself. Not ugly, but thoroughly ordinary. The older woman swept the floors, pushing up clouds of paper dust, while the men wiped down the tables. They did not leave until around seven, the sun long gone though twilight still hung in the sky.

Quinot tried to pull him along, but Feuilly paused to wait for M. Lapeyre, who was locking up. "Shall I see you tomorrow, monsieur?"

"Of course!" the boss snapped. "If you were sacked, you'd know it."

"Thank you, monsieur."

Feuilly thought he heard someone mutter "bootlicker", but he deliberately ignored the insult as he followed Quinot and his mates to their café. If he were indeed to buy them a round of drinks, it was poor manners on anyone's part to insult the man who needed this job to pay for their drinks.

They were not so organised as the compagnon joiners of Laforêt's experience. No oaths or songs accompanied the round, merely a call to the café owner for brandy all around and a credit account to be set up in Feuilly's name. Only once liquored did the men finally introduce themselves. Feuilly promptly forgot half their names; only Quinot and the Favé twins, ginger-haired Bretons, stuck with him. Everyone was kind enough – indeed, after the first round of brandy that he had been required to purchase, he was treated to a pot of wine. His own story was soon told, particularly as he left out the nearly three weeks in prison, but Quinot saw to it that Lapeyre's story was imparted with all necessary haste.

"He can be a bastard, I warn you, but he's loyal as anything. I mean, it's brilliant for Nevers he'll have a job when his arm heals, if it heals, but it's not so great for you, is it?"

"I've been doing day work for three months. Loyal or not, a wage is a wage."

"If he likes you, he'll find something for you. Mme Lemesle is here because her husband was here before Lapeyre was, Adèle because of her father."

"He looks after his predecessor's widows and orphans, then?"

"That he does," a blond man agreed.

"If he is not the founder, when did he purchase the concern?"

"At the Restoration, is how I heard it," one of the Favé twins said.

The other added, "The founder got arrested after the Hundred Days, had to sell off everything in the city."

"No," another man tried to correct, "he got expelled from the city, all right, old M. Dutot, but Lapeyre bought him out after everything went bad in '16, '17, something like that. The workshop wasn't making him any more proceeds to live off in his country exile."

"So he sold to a southerner. A stranger?"

"As far as I know. Mme Lemesle's the only one of us around since the old days. I started in '18, and Lapeyre was already in charge. Adèle might know, as her father was the last of the old timers."

Was there a great deal of turnover in this business, that an "old timer" had been with the firm for only seven years? Or was it simply the upheaval of the fall of the empire followed by the terrible harvest the next year? Feuilly decided it was better not to know, as he would only be there a couple of months, anyway. "M. Dutot must have been a great businessman to retire to the country," he replied.

"I think he was," the other man said. "Lapeyre, this is all he's got. Which you can probably tell." He did look more like a jumped-up workman than Cartoux ever did, Feuilly thought.

They chatted on for a while, until excuses about wives at home began to be made. Feuilly was exhausted, practically penniless, would have to wait three days before he was paid for this portion of the week, but at least he walked home with good news even if his pockets were a bit lighter.

"Hallelujah," Laforêt said when he was told the news. "That'll stave off the wolf for the next quarter."

If only he could get work, too, Feuilly thought. He was getting tired of keeping them both while Laforêt only managed scraps.


	46. Chapter 46

Wallpaper corrections proved even less interesting – and more difficult for that – than basic tints had been for Cartoux. Yet the shop was clean, well-run, and a steady source of work.

"No seasons, no inventory lay-off," Quinot told Feuilly. "He'll pull the women, and maybe you, around Easter for inventory, but he ships out to America all year. The mural panels are summer-only production, but he has enough business in the rest for all winter."

Indeed, Lapeyre's two lines were in constant motion except during breaks, breaks Feuilly appreciated by the end of his second day. It was close work in the grey light, and the length of the paper made it difficult to place lamps to his best advantage. The blocks the men hoisted were heavy and required greater care than ordinary building materials of a similar weight might have done. No one had significant training – it was not at all like Laforêt's cabinetry – but they all knew their parts in making the vines and swags that flowed from the workshop in their hundreds and thousands.

Feuilly contrived to keep somewhat to himself, as he could not afford the pleasant rituals of the men until his wages were paid. He took the afternoon break in their company, unwilling to be thought unfriendly, but he could not afford the morning and noon breaks as well. He felt eyes constantly on him, but he kept his own on his work. The chanted hoist and thud of the blocks, punctuated by the occasional call for paint or paper, filled the background of his thoughts like the chant of the mass as he prayed, a constant reminder that work was indeed salvation.

And through it all, the women moved silently, never joining in the chant or any audible conversation. They murmured to each other from time to time, and answered the shouts directed at them, but they were quiet adjuncts to the real work of printing. They moved familiarly enough around the men that the silence seemed to Feuilly more habit than shyness. After all, fresh handprints occasionally appeared at the back of the copious apron that kept the girl's grey dress as clean as possible, but the paint lightened as it dried, so the grabs faded into the background quickly enough, too. Cartoux would never have stood for such lack of discipline among his employees. Lapeyre was coarser, so Feuilly shrugged it off. The girl was not married, he assumed, nor was she a distressed lady like Sophie, and if she did not make them stop, then it was because she did not care to. She was not pretty enough for modesty to be becoming, nor was she on display, seeking more than an occasional pinch or slap. Just one of the thousands of ordinary girls in Paris who knew the score in the capital and did not object to the game. Mère Lamesle was too old to play anymore, so Adèle was the only target in evidence.

The men's occasional grasps and jokes did not torment her, so far as Feuilly could tell, so it was all in the ordinary daily intercourse of a slightly lower tone than Cartoux had been willing to cultivate. In his first week, the one bit of teasing he heard involved himself and was quickly dropped.

"What about the new boy?" he overheard in a momentary pause as one line got a new batch of ink and the other was pulling their paper. He did not yet know the voices well enough to identify the questioner, but it seemed likely to be the large blond man standing next to Quinot. Adèle looked over at Feuilly, pulled a face, and walked away, shaking her head. The blond man laughed, joined by much of his line, and Quinot said something lost as the second line returned to their habitual chant. It was proof he did not fit into this company, Feuilly thought, and never would. Ada would have made the same face, and Laforêt might have made or heard similar comments from Aleçon a year ago, so he shrugged it off. It was only temporary work, work he could not imagine doing for years on end. So long as it put some money in his purse, what did he care if he were the butt of jokes?

At the end of the week, he had something in his pocket again, enough he could join the men for a drink and pay down a little of the tab he had run up his first night. Quinot and the Bretons continued friendly, the blond man indifferent rather than hostile or contemptuous. Whatever he had said to the girl must have been in fun to her rather than in spite to him, Feuilly decided.

He returned home to find Laforêt surrounded by lit candles and a pile of wood scraps. "What the hell?" He could make out a couple of broken chairs, but on the whole it looked more like the preparations for a bonfire than an identifiable project.

"I know it looks bad, but -" He gestured towards the dark fireplace.

Everything had been removed from the mantle. Feuilly started to angrily ask "Where is everything?" when he realised just what was being pointed out. The odd sort of alcove had been filled in with shelves. His books, drawing materials, extra clothes were all laid out neatly, as were Laforêt's belongings. "You didn't work today?"

"Picked up a few planks I was promised yesterday. You didn't notice the chips last night?"

He hadn't looked at much of anything in the dark the previous night, his eyes still seeing the shadows of those damned pink flowers. "Didn't notice. Thanks, by the way." It wasn't much towards what Laforêt owed him, but the shelves were nice to have.

"Next time I get called over to the rue de Cléry, I'll see about getting more wood."

What good anything from the chairmakers would be was rather beyond Feuilly's conception at the moment. There was already a pile of wood – was it not enough? But he did not dwell on it; Laforêt's projects were his own concern. As long as there was money in the end, they were not Feuilly's business.

Monday, Feuilly found the workshop locked. Cursing the Holy Monday that he felt was picking his pocket, he ended up back at Mme Duzan's reading room, starting in with the volume of Xenophon she had told him was a sort of sequel to Thucydides' _History of the Peloponnesian War_. It was the same price as the two cups of wine that would see him through the day in a café, so Greek history it would have to be. If he was not to be permitted to work, he could at least continue to educate himself. His fellow workers could not prevent that, no matter how much they tried.

Tuesday thus found him annoyed at his fellows when he arrived. "You follow the Monday, I see," he said to Lapeyre, not well hiding his annoyance.

"You think I can run the place a day with you and two women? I've never had a choice in the matter. We're doing green Fountain and orange and violet paisley this week," he announced to the workers. "Come on, hurry it up. Adèle, that's green 12 for the background!"

There was more play in the paisley than there had been in the previous week's flowered vines, while the pattern called "Fountain" depicted a shepherdess helping to give water to a traveler's horse, alternated with her sheep. The design was printed in two different shades of green on a green ground, and the first order of business was literally painting the solid background shade onto the paper before any printing could begin. Here, he was asked to help, joining in a frenzied application of green paint to four rolls at a time. Buckets of paint were prepared as quickly as Adèle could mix them and emptied as fast as the men could paint and hang the rolls, the drying lines quickly filled with plain green paper. The paisley began printing on the second line while the first made their green paper, a deep orange network of vines with huge gaps left for the paisley design itself. The vine pattern here was tiny and intricate, a space filler rather than a design in itself, and the small gaps occasionally left by the printers sometimes required, instead of a line of paint, a small addition to the design.

Lapeyre caught Feuilly making one of these additions around noon. "No, it's no good. Not you. The gap's too big to fit the paisley in neatly. Damn all your eyes, are you all still drunk from yesterday?" he shouted at the line, grabbing the sheet off Feuilly's table and knocking a dish of paint aside as the paper trailed behind him. "Look at this! Do you think this can be fixed? If I find another one, you'll be docked a sou. Each time. All of you!"

Feuilly had managed to catch the dish of paint before it completely capsized, but at the price of a very orange hand. At least the paint washed quickly while still wet, leaving behind only a trace of pigment. A fresh sheet, properly printed this time, was on his table by the time he returned.

At the break, he caught a glare from the blond man who had not entirely taken to his presence the previous week. But he followed close to Quinot, determined to do his best to fit into the company now that it appeared he would be with them for some time. "What's up Lapeyre's ass?" Quinot asked generally.

"Maybe someone who doesn't consider Mondays sacred," the blond man said.

"If you have a problem, tell me straight," Feuilly challenged. The man was a head taller than he was, considerably broader and several years older, but he did not sound Parisian. If there were to be a fight, the man probably had no street skills.

"The new man should follow the lead of his betters, not make us look bad," the man threatened.

"It isn't his fault you can't place a block where it belongs," one of the Favés said.

"Says the man who's been painting sheets all morning."

"Maybe Lapeyre's right and you should be painting until you sober up." It was not Feuilly's best idea, but an older man stepped between him and the blond man before fists could be raised.

"Let the boy alone. And don't make Ricard angry," he lectured Feuilly. "He may be out of line, but you're old enough to know your place, too."

Quinot was a bit less friendly after that. He seemed to have no love for Ricard, but Feuilly's assertion of dominance was not appreciated. The Favés, however, must have had a real rivalry with Ricard, as they suddenly adopted Feuilly as their own.

"Is it usual for a workshop to have rivalries among the workers?" he asked Laforêt that night. "Or for your people, do they keep it between the brotherhoods?"

"Men are men, no matter where they're gathered. What sort of rivalry?" Feuilly explained how sides appeared to have been taken. "How old are the Bretons? Young like us, or closer to settled like Richard?"

"Ricard," Feuilly corrected. "Young, I guess."

"There you go. More forgiving of you being an idiot. Why challenge Holy Monday?"

"We need the money."

"You challenge it now, it means you don't get it when you need it. If you want more work, find yourself day work on Mondays. Don't ruin it for the rest of us."

"Cartoux never observed Monday holidays."

"And the work was comparatively light. I didn't mind it there, either. More money. But you could sit down all day and have no heavy lifting except for when the montures were delivered. An hour of heavy work once a week was child's play. If the blocks are as heavy as you say, you've no call to want more of your light work on their backs."

"Then why are the Favés on my side?"

"Probably something you haven't figured out yet. Ricard's a bully, maybe? I can imagine the bastard. He'll beat the shit out of you if you piss him off again, so keep your nose down, but let what happens happen. Take any allies you can get. You need more friends."

"I don't know I've anything in common with them except that they don't much like Ricard."

"That's all it takes. If this has you confused, I can't imagine how you'd have fared in a lodging house of _compagnons_."

Feuilly did fare better keeping his mouth shut. Questions simply made him look out even more out of place. It was easier as the week progressed and the living detail of the Fountain occupied much more of his attention. So long as he was busy, he was satisfied, and he could more easily ignore Ricard's looks when he had his own work.

After a few more days, Feuilly started to understand the real possibilities in Holy Monday. He had work every day that everyone else had work, and a day off each week to spend in Mme Duzan's reading room. Yes, he could earn a little more with more work, but he was also being handed the time to continue his education. Everything in the world was starting to look a little better now that he had a place to go each day where his efforts were appreciated by a man who could pay for them.

As the week was ending, Laforêt came home late whistling and half drunk. "We shall soon be in funds!" he announced. "Building works in the rue du Grand-Prieuré. Windows, doors, stairs, cabinetry, all awaiting my genius!"

"Genius?" Half the room was still a mess from the construction of the shelves. Every scrap and the broken chairs were still required for the unexplained future project, the details of which Feuilly had determined not to ask. Perhaps the new job would give whatever wood Laforêt still needed, as the rue de Cléry had not come calling.

"String of four houses, with ground floor shops. Should keep me busy through Easter." Though he knocked on the wall even as he delivered his good fortune: it would not do to jinx the best luck they had yet had.

Having the prospect of decent funds available – proper joinery paid much better than Feuilly's corrections, even if he was on day-wages rather than paid by the piece – Laforêt was determined to spend some of them. "Come out with me on Sunday," he begged.

"Where?"

"Where do you think? Bercy. Saint-Mandé. Wherever you like."

Chasing girls who would want nothing to do with either of them. "It's Lent."

"What has that to do with anything?"

"I'll be at mass."

"Only in the morning. And you go every Sunday, so I don't see what's so different this time. We can afford it for once!"

"I told you, it's Lent. All believers should abstain not only from the consumption of flesh but also from the consumption of vice."

"It's also a Sunday, and there's a dispensation."

"Vice wasn't included."

"It wasn't mentioned at all, in any of the announcements. Do you think Mlle Sophie will hold an evening at the dance hall against you when she doesn't even know you've gone?"

"Bercy," Feuilly relented. "I don't like Saint-Mandé."

There had been no visits to the Chrzyszczewskis since _T__ł__usty czwartek_, only bare pleasantries at church. Feuilly had to admit he had been avoiding the Poles in general, but it was Lent, and Didier's café was out of the way of Lapeyre's shop. The penitential season had been excuse enough, but it seemed Sophie must no longer care to see him at all, or Pan Wojciech no longer cared to see him privately. Bahorel had probably taken his place, so she would never learn of any trips to a dance hall. Laforêt had a point: the Bishop of Paris had given a dispensation for Sundays during Lent, and if one could consume meat, then one could certainly go dancing.

Indeed, plenty of other young people must have made the same excuse to themselves, for the streets of Bercy bustled in the March drizzle. Girls with bright new ribbons in their caps despite the season jostled with young men in shabby but carefully brushed coats. Spring had arrived by the calendar – it was the very day of the vernal equinox – and young Paris had turned out to pay it tribute. Feuilly and Laforêt stopped first at a café to fortify their nerves. "Ada's out somewhere tonight," Laforêt told him over the noise of the crowd.

"You think we'll see her?"

He shrugged. "Not my business what she does, is it?"

No, but he was trying to make it so, Feuilly thought. "How many cafés are having dances tonight? She'll be somewhere else."

Three glasses of wine later, they went down the street to where the advertised dance was being held. Ten sous each for admission, and the close, hot back room was opened to them. Laforêt immediately went up to the prettiest girl they could find. "Good evening, mademoiselle. Do you dance?"

"Not with you." She turned promptly back to her girlfriend and started whispering.

"Does that actually work for you in the provinces?" Feuilly ragged him.

"Let's see you do any better."

Feuilly looked around. This was a different set of women than he was used to, and his experience had been helped initially by his youth and later by his reputation. No one here knew him by sight, or would swoon when he introduced himself. A failed lockpick was no good in this company, and he did not trust any confidence tricks after his success with Mme Mirès, a miracle he knew better than to expect to repeat. It was no good going straight to the prettiest girls unless you wanted to be rejected; neither should one abandon all standards and find the wallflowers just to have anyone give you the time of day. There was a middle ground where some success should be assured.

A blonde girl laughing with a group of darker friends appeared the most obvious target. She was not as pretty as a couple of her friends, but she was by no means plain. Her company proved she had some fashionable tastes, and the ribbon in her cap looked new. "Good evening, mademoiselle," he bowed to her. The women he knew liked it when he played the gentleman for them. "Could a stranger ask your hand in the next dance?"

"He could. Doesn't mean I'd give it."

"I don't doubt that you've already given it to someone else. Would you like to join me on the floor if you've a free dance tonight?"

One of her prettier friends whispered something in her ear. "I haven't got a free dance tonight, monsieur." She at least had the courtesy to sound sorry about rejecting him.

Her friends, however, did not bother with courtesy. "If she did, no reason to spend it on you," the prettiest in the group said. "Martin, darling!" she called out to a beefy man with a pockmarked face, who quickly grabbed her around the waist. What the hell taste did these women have, rejecting him in favour of a scarred labourer who probably danced like an ape?

He slunk back to Laforêt. "The city treats you no better."

"A different company treats me a damned sight better. Are they looking for a good time or a husband?" he added irritably.

"You do better with the good time girls?"

"I used to do damned well," he boasted. But it was true. He could have traded Lydie in for any of twenty others like her had he felt the need. Lydie was more of a beauty than the blonde could hope to be, but he was too good for the one and somehow not good enough for the other. How could he not be good enough for a single dance? Even Mme Mirès would probably have let him kiss her in the end, had he dared, but she was a Jewess, so perhaps her race was primary over her honest modesty. Honest modesty was not much present at the dance hall tonight, yet its absence was not to his benefit.

Eventually, Laforêt found a willing partner, but Feuilly did not share a dance all night. Some girls looked right past him, some tittered, the most daring rejected him straight, which made a pleasant change. Even putting on his most charming smile to take pity on a cripple girl, he could not find satisfaction. "I can't dance, monsieur. I'm sorry." She returned to gazing longingly at the dance floor, though Feuilly soon realised she was gazing less at the dancers than at one particular dancer.

"Why is it whores find me handsome, and girls want nothing to do with me," he complained to Laforêt as they left. "Every damned one there might as well have heard from Ada that there was something wrong with me." As if to punctuate the truth of his appraisal, a couple of heavily made up streetwalkers called out to them from an alley. "Another time, girls," he called back. It would have been nice to fool around with a girl, but he wasn't really in the mood for a whore.

"I won't forget you, dear," the taller of them called back. "Pretty bastard, that one," she said to her companion.

"That's your problem," Laforêt told him. "You haven't got enough man in you."

"Insult me again, why don't you?" Feuilly snapped.

"Just saying what Ada says," he said, his hands spread in truce. "She's wrong, but then, I know you, don't I? And I'm not a girl. She is."

"How much man have you got in you if you only managed one dance all night?"

"It was a shit night all around. You know it was a shit night when you don't even see anyone slumming."

Now that Laforêt mentioned it, there had been no students on the fringes of the room, having their way with the girls who were looking for fun rather than marriage. His experience had been almost entirely with whores, but there were many gradations between someone like Lydie and someone like Sophie, and while tonight must have brought out the Adas, where were the potential mistresses for the future doctors and lawyers? Without their prey, had they turned to looking for husbands, too?

But what did it matter for him, Feuilly told himself, when he was not a moneyed student and could offer the girls only the fun of the evening, not the gifts and dinners and Sunday outings they would expect. That was why Mme Mirès might have succumbed to a kiss, after all – she thought him better than he was. He had played her false in that way, and to do the same to these girls would have been bait and switch, giving them a penniless corrector of wallpaper when they expected a shabby artist who would sometimes receive an allowance from home to squander on them. He had not been looking only for sex, which was why he had turned down the whores. He had thought a dance or two, maybe a little petting after, was what he had really missed since he had left Lydie. But it might as well have been a room full of Sophies, rejecting him over and over for trying to be something he was not. To hell with all of them, he thought. If they don't want a polite, honest chap, why bother? A little bait and switch might be just what they need. The confidence trick was perhaps the only way to go in such company. Next time, he decided, we'll see how the artist gets on.


	47. Chapter 47

The building works did not keep Laforêt busy through Easter, unfortunately. Feuilly came home after a day of five and six colour borders only to find a few additions to the pile of wood and broken chairs that had sat for three weeks. The additions appeared to mean the end of the contract.

Laforêt was looking thoughtfully at the mess. "Can you come straight back here after mass tomorrow?" he asked without any other greeting. "I'll need your help stringing the bed."

"That's what this is?" Feuilly asked, pleasantly surprised. He had assumed it was some preparation for more "projects" of an unknown nature, collected early for when unemployment would again descend, as he expected it had now done. The pieces of a bed would explain some of what had just been piled up. At least Laforêt's late earnings had begun to match Feuilly's expenditures if he'd bought a bedstead.

"It will be if I don't fuck it up. If I don't do anything fancy, it can't take that long to knock something together."

"I know nothing about any of this sort of thing," Feuilly reminded him.

"You don't need to. I'll get these cut and bolted together while you're at mass, then I should just need you to hold the rope taut while I string. Full bedstead by tomorrow night, if all goes as planned."

Cut? Looking more closely at the pile of wood, Feuilly realised, "You're building it from scratch?"

"You've seen what half-rotted shit is going for. I got a deal on the wood from my last employer."

"Appropriated from work since you finished early?"

"I'm back in a bit next week, but the holiday, well, you know. I did pay up fair and square for some of this. But I may have implied it was a favour to Ada," he admitted.

Feuilly had to laugh. How was he suddenly the one on the straight and narrow? "And the chairs?"

"Cash money. Lampin at Deslandes' shop pointed me to a junk man." Deslandes was one of the chairmakers for whom Laforêt had hauled wood. Somehow, Laforêt had gotten in very well with the turners despite his training as a joiner, a friendship of great benefit through the dreary winter. "They aren't worth much with the seats completely broken out."

"Not to us, either."

"They're good to me now. Wait a couple of weeks. Once this ends and I have time, you'll see what else can be done with them."

Feuilly returned from Palm Sunday mass to find the floor a mess of wood chips and sawdust, Laforêt scraping the end of a long piece of wood into a tongue, using the broken chairs as a sawhorse. "It's taking a little longer than I expected. A couple more hours, maybe, before I can drill, then this'll go together really fast. You could have had dinner with Mlle Sophie after all," he apologised.

"No, I couldn't. There was no invitation to decline." There had not been one since _T__ł__usty czwartek_, and Feuilly kept vacillating over if it was for the best. Sophie cared something for him, it seemed, but perhaps Pan Wojciech was growing suspicious as the nature of that affection. Or was inviting M. Bahorel in his place – better a rich Frenchman than a poor Frenchman if it had to be a Frenchman at all. M. Kalinowski had not seemed to want to take Sophie himself, regardless of how much he had praised her beauty and education. Despite his exile, or his fraternising with the exiles, he could probably find a bride with a dowry. "What can I do to help?"

"That you won't ruin?" Laforêt joked. "See the posts?" He pointed to a neat layout of four pieces of wood with slots carved into their sides. "Take a file and smooth out the top and bottom edges so they don't catch on anything."

"Like this?" Feuilly confirmed, holding the rasp at an angle but not daring to make any move that could ruin all Laforêt's hard work.

"And the bottoms, too," Laforêt approved.

Laforêt worked with practised ease, while Feuilly felt every move he made was awkward. Scraping floors had felt easier. Laforêt had to stop his own work a couple of times to correct him, for which he apologised perhaps too profusely.

"The apprentices are usually younger, but that's not why they aren't any better on their first day. We were all worse than useless once."

"Thanks," Feuilly told him sarcastically.

Laforêt laughed. "You're a lot better than useless. Just keep the strokes going like that and not too much pressure. It's just like having a wank – you'll know when it feels right."

It was sunset by the time everything was swept up and the frame was bolted into place. Then Laforêt pulled it to pieces again, to Feuilly's surprise. "Help me wax it – this needs to go back before anyone notices." He had borrowed a jar of wax polish in anticipation of the day's activity.

"You are working tomorrow?"

"Under pressure to finish this week, and we don't get Friday or Saturday. My head is worth a lot more than a jar of polish."

With much rubbing, the eight pieces that would form the bed were coated in the liquid solution and propped against the wall to dry. "Looks like we'll have to string it tomorrow night," Laforêt apologised. "It takes a good six hours to cure. I thought the construction would have been finished a couple hours ago."

"It's fine," Feuilly assured him. "This is really bloody amazing." He had expected that one day, they would put together some money for an old bedstead, not that either of them would ever own something new. Though the shelves were useful and appreciated, he found a bedstead far more impressive.

Over a late dinner, Laforêt explained, "I know it would look better if I knew any of the turners well enough to get lathed posts, but I just can't abide the idea of used furniture like this, which is all we can afford. A table or chair, that's one thing, but a bed? They put the mattresses through sulfur, but not so much the bedsteads. Do you know how many bugs could be hiding in one of those things, in the holes where you string the rope? I can't do it. Not when I could build it myself for the same cost."

Feuilly had to agree that the smell of freshly cut wood was much nicer than the sulfur had been when they brought the mattress home, even if he felt that such a preference as expressed by Laforêt demonstrated a more effeminate domesticity than he had expected. But he had grown up on the streets and in flop houses and with men who had abandoned all traditions of marriage and family, so perhaps a distaste for a few bugs was ordinary among the educated workers who could strive for a proper home.

Indeed, the following evening when they assembled the bed and strung the mattress support, Feuilly had a much greater satisfaction than when they had brought the mattress home. Here was something brand new, the unpainted wood bright with its shiny coat of wax, that was only theirs, that they had brought into being with their own hands and Laforêt's ingenuity. Simple as it was, it belonged to them more than anything else in the flat.

"I'll knock up some seats for the chairs next, then see what I can do for a table," Laforêt promised as they looked at their carefully made bed with the reverence it deserved. Despite the broken chairs and the leftover chips of wood, the place suddenly looked like what Feuilly had once hoped it might – no longer a fugitive hovel but a respectable dwelling, a proof that they were no longer in exile but had taken a place in society again. "Once there's a table and chairs, we might have a bit of a party, maybe. A housewarming sort of thing, like the girls sometimes have."

"Is that a women's thing, or is it just that women are more likely to have furniture?"

"It's a thing when a person can afford a couple bottles of wine and has some friends. It'd make up to Ada a bit for all the hammering."

"She didn't like the shelves?"

"She liked the ones I put up for her two years ago. She didn't like the banging when I was putting ours up."

Easter at last brought Feuilly a reprieve. Pan Wojciech hurried up to him after mass, catching him by the sleeve. "You will break your fast with us, will you not?"

"Isn't the invitation a little late?"

"You come to the café no more."

"And the rest of Lent?" Feuilly was not so much belligerent as confused. Palm Sunday had been the time an invitation should have been issued, but instead, Pan Wojciech had merely acknowledged him with a polite nod.

"It is the penitential season. We do not entertain guests."

"Of course. Forgive me, pan. I am more accustomed to less pious neighbours."

"It is a degenerate country," Pan Wojciech agreed. "You will come?"

"Of course," Feuilly agreed with a smile. Whether or not the excuse was legitimate, the invitation was real. He had been given a reprieve, however impromptu and possibly brief.

They met Sophie near a side chapel, where she waited with a basket. "M. Feuilly will join us," her father informed her.

Her face lit up, and Feuilly's heart rose. "I am so glad to hear it. Go on, you need not wait for me."

"What is she doing?" he asked her father as they walked back to the Chrzyszczewski flat.

"Having our meal blessed. The priests here will not do it on Saturday as they do at home."

"She will wait to be noticed, then have to come home and start cooking?"

"Oh, no, no. It is only tradition. A few eggs, a loaf of bread, a sugar lamb. We will eat the eggs when she comes. The real dinner is cold, done yesterday, waiting for us like all festival days." Feuilly had forgotten that for the Chrzyszczewskis, the difference between hot Sunday dinner and cold Sunday dinner was any relevant saint's day.

Sophie was not long behind them, which surprised Feuilly. "Do they expect you to come now?"

"Abbé Michel was waiting for me." Her face clouded briefly, but she shook her head and forced a smile. "But the basket has been blessed." She spread the covering white cloth over the table, then carefully laid out the tiny lamb made of sugar, the loaf of bread, the salt cellar, and eight beautifully decorated eggs. "Please," she beckoned to Feuilly. "An egg for us all."

"Who are the rest?" Were there other guests, perhaps a beau for Sophie?

"One for your friend. Even in this country, we thought we might see him at Easter as we saw him at Christmas," Pan Wojciech told Feuilly.

"M. Laforêt," Sophie explained. "Please take it to him."

They had been noticed at Christmas after all? "Are you sure? Is there no one to whom you would prefer it go?"

"It is for M. Laforêt," she insisted. "I shall hold dinner if you wish to go and fetch him."

"I haven't the first clue what he intended to do with himself today," Feuilly admitted. He had gotten up for mass; Laforêt had rolled over, groaned, and muttered something about it being too damned early for Christ to be risen. Feuilly's well-intended question as to whether he should see his flatmate after mass had been waved away. The new bed was getting excellent use in its first day off.

"Then take him the egg. It is good fortune for the year, since it has been blessed by the priest. Zosia will take the others to your other comrade and her family tomorrow." Pan Wojciech then prayed over the eggs one last time, and Sophie handed the most beautifully decorated of them all to Feuilly. "He is risen. _Wesolego alleluja_." Their hands touched as he took the egg, and she let her fingers linger in his for a moment.

But only for a moment. Her father was watching. "_Wesolego alleluja_." Pan Wojciech cracked open his egg. Sophie did the same. But Feuilly examined his a little more closely. Such an intricate work of art, tiny leaves on vines like some of the wallpapers he had been examining, but on an egg, pale against the deep gold of the dye.

"Did you make these?" he asked Sophie.

"Of course. The men of the house are not permitted to touch the eggs – they will spoil the decoration."

"It is too beautiful to eat."

"Eat it you must," Pan Wojiech ordered jovially. "It is your luck for the year."

Holy eggs, sprinkled with holy salt, began their feast. Only then did Sophie bring out the ham, the beetroot soup, the pickled cucumbers, and the sweet cake they called _sernik_, made of soft cheese and sugar, a very odd sort of sweet.

He had been out in the cold for even longer than the forty days of penitence required for Lent, yet the Chrzyszczewskis acted as if none of that time had passed. They politely asked if he had found steady work yet and were pleased by the wallpaper corrections, though Feuilly did not tell them that he expected the real holder of the position to return someday soon. A broken wrist should not entirely end a man's useful working life.

But it was a pleasant afternoon so long as he set aside his doubts. And it was even more pleasant to find the flat something of a mess when he returned, as Laforêt had taken his holiday as the opportunity to fit seats to the chairs.

"I'm almost done," he apologised. The air was thick with sawdust, but he had put in a good day's work, sanding down the old paint and trimming wooden planks to fit over the top of the old rushes that had finally been cut away and were now strewn across the floor. "You can paint them sometime if you like – they'll take paint very nicely, I think."

"Here, Sophie told me to give this to you." He passed Laforêt the carefully etched egg.

"Really?"

"Her father expected better of you. Caught us at mass on Christmas and thought you'd religion enough for Easter."

"My religion is this," he claimed, patting his saw, "and that," pointing to the flask sitting on the mantle, in easy reach.

"Hell with religion. They call it luck for the year."

"I take the luck gladly." Laforêt suddenly turned serious. "Thank her for me. I didn't expect a kindness like that."

"They had eggs blessed for Mme Pinon's family, too."

"Good. Nothing but kindness to it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"How many times have you figured out she won't marry you, and you hang around her anyway?"

"It's Easter. Of course I was glad Pan Wojciech invited me to dinner. It's a feast day. How am I to see an egg for you as a love token for me?"

"A man in love can see anything as a love token."

Feuilly took a swig from the flask on the mantle. His stolen flask, but filled by Laforêt with a very rough brandy, or at least a strong alcoholic substance possibly related to brandy. "I think it's from Pan Wojciech, not from Panna Zofia."

"Trying to address her in her own language is just going to send you further over the edge."

"I mostly don't. I address her father in his language. The man likes me, and I like the company he keeps. Yes, politically. Wanting a free Poland won't get me arrested, so forgive me if I prefer to concentrate on their repression instead of ours."

"No one agitates for a foreign country unless he's in love or well paid for his troubles."

"There's always Byron."

"Pfft. Englishmen don't count. Particularly mad Englishmen."

"Then I'm already gone, and no egg can push me further over the edge, nor warning bring me back. Do you hear what you're saying?" Feuilly argued.

"Do you hear what I'm saying?" Laforêt argued back. "She isn't for any of us, and I don't particularly want to watch what happens when you finally figure it out. One friend going mad over a woman was more than enough for me."

"Did he throw himself in the Seine?" Feuilly asked sympathetically, all his annoyance dissipated at this revelation.

"No, but it was a close-run thing, involving a lot of sobbing in the middle of the pont Louis XVI. Right next to Cardinal Richelieu, I think."

"After everything else I've done, a girl not falling in love with me is hardly going to drive me to a bridge. I know she's not for me, or anyone else. It's her father's fault. But that doesn't mean I should just stop seeing her, or her father. I like that they want me in their company. And she likes me in one sense, so I'm not burdening her the way her father does, bringing people around when she has to do all the work in the house. She's said as much, that I'm always welcome."

"And that keeps you going back, ready to be stomped on again."

Feuilly had not told Laforêt all about _T__ł__usty czwartek_, but his annoyance must have been more evident than he had thought. "It was just a feast day. And you were invited, too, if you hadn't preferred to sleep rather than attend mass."

"I just hope that stays all it is." Feuilly took another swig from the flask; Laforêt stared at the egg. "Nice work on the egg, though. Really fancy. Sophie do this?"

"Of course. Not because she's the artist in the family, but because she's the woman."

"Thank her and her father for me next time you see them. Since there's apparently going to be a next time."

Feuilly shrugged it off. "Tell me more about what you're doing to the chairs." He'd rather hear Laforêt be right about something he was a real expert in rather than a subject Feuilly wished he did not know so much about.


	48. Chapter 48

Despite Laforêt's warnings, and the lengthening sunlight extending his days at work, Feuilly began to return to the Poles, though only on a Monday evening after an afternoon spent with Mme Duzan. Pan Chrzyszczewski welcomed him openly, as did Bahorel.

"How have you been doing with Panna Zofia?" Feuilly asked him, deliberately using Sophie's Polish name to assert his intimacy with the family.

"I've had nothing to do with her. You're as free to pursue her as she is to run from you. I haven't the blood, either, remember?"

So he did recall their last conversation, even after all these months. "But you have the interest."

"I have no problem finding pretty girls who actually want something to do with me."

Of course, he would be one of the students who the girls were usually after at café dances. Not terribly handsome though no worse than the workingmen they usually went for, but better dressed, able to buy them much nicer presents, and available for day trips to pleasure gardens and the like. Feuilly had never even been able to afford to take Lydie to try the _montagnes russes_ in Belleville, always finding better means to spend their ten sous. The girls who adored the dangers of such entertainments were the same girls who did not mind the dangers of attachments to their social superiors. Risks were necessary if the rewards were to be great. Lydie took no great risks, seeking only a roof over her head and a little food in her stomach. If she had any talents other than copulation, she would have been just like her dreary, hardworking flatmates.

"So you're out in the cold, too."

"Never was in to begin with. An invitation to an open house is not an invitation to intimacy."

"If your father was Baron de Bahorel, that might count for something."

"Ah, but my father is Jaufre Bahoreu. Or Geoffroy Bahorel. Depends on if we speak Gascon or French. Since there is the option of Gascon, there will be no barons in my family line."

"I thought the rich everywhere in France spoke French."

"So they do. Doesn't mean they don't also speak, and prefer, their native patois."

"Which do you prefer?"

"French. I'm not a peasant like my parents, even if I grew up with the lingo. And when in Paris, it is best to be Parisian, to speak this patois that we call the great tongue of our nation. M. Albert, I think, is less keen on this patois than on his own."

"But he has a nation to which his language belongs, even if that nation is currently under the thumb of conquerors."

"Conquerors invited in once, though I don't think M. Albert will say much about it."

"Invited in?" Bahorel's contacts with the higher social reaches of the Polish exiles put in him in the way of interesting information, though Feuilly was rather skeptical of the student's true grasp of recent Polish history. He had not enjoyed the incentives Feuilly had had in learning such a subject in depth.

"Massalski wavers in just what he's doing, I think, which puts him in good company with the rest of his family. A brother was a bishop, part of the Targowica group that asked the Russians to come in and shut down all the liberal reforms the parliament was making at the same time we were attempting liberal reforms of our own. The Russians marched in, defeated the liberal Polish forces, and stayed. For his troubles, Bishop Massalski ended up hanged in an uprising a few years later. M. Albert, not being a good liberal, might have been cheering that invasion at the time, and our Prince Massalski probably was, too."

"You are getting botched history from Pan Kalinowski," Feuilly insisted.

"Kalinowski is no more a real liberal than M. Albert; he has money from his parents back home to prove it."

"So if M. Albert really is a terribly conservative revolutionary, where are these liberals you keep mentioning that I've never seen?"

"Madalinski – his grandfather was with Kosciusko – has a bit of a group around him. But they're from the Prussian section, while your friend M. Albert and his conservatives are all from what the Russians took after looking to them for protection. But then, M. Albert and most of his friends are now disobeying Russian orders to have gone home after the peace was signed in 1814. Madalinski's Prussian Poles left after things had calmed down. He ran out of money when attempting to get to England and just stayed here, so his friends have joined him here."

"A well-organised band."

Bahorel laughed at the joke. "Our late king let them stay. What the new one has to say about it, no one much cares."

"If he remains determined to bring back the old ways, he will continue to allow us. No one other than the king should tell the king who his guests might be." Pan Chrzyszczewski had caught them in conversation.

Bahorel looked much abashed as he greeted the old Pole. "Forgive us, monsieur. We are young, and it is our duty to find humour in everything that ought to be serious."

"You find us in a degenerate age," Feuilly reminded Pan Chrzyszczewski.

"Yes, I do."

"Let us young people talk, pan," Bahorel asked. "We will offend no one if no one listens to us. And when we have worked out our disdain, then we can listen with the respect that is due our elders." Pan Chrzyszczewski walked away, shaking his head, while Feuilly and Bahorel smothered their laughter. Feuilly respected Pan Chrzyszczewski, but sometimes the nobleman was more evident than the friendly father. "Now, what have you been doing, since you have not been eating beignets and drinking Prince Massalski's vodka for two months."

"_P__ą__czki_, not beignets, and very little of anything between then and Easter."

"Have you found work?"

"Kind of you to ask." It really was, Feuilly realised. "At the moment, I'm making corrections in wallpaper patterns until the man who usually does the work recovers from a broken wrist. I assume you have no connections of any assistance."

"Sadly, no. If you were quick with a dictionary and an excellent liar, I could put you in touch with a man I know who publishes translations from Italian and Spanish."

"A man who neither knows nor cares how accurate those translations are?"

"Exactly. But it doesn't pay well, and you're likely doing just as well with your wallpaper."

"In other words, I'm not the sort of person one introduces as a translator."

"Your words, not mine. But I've done a little research and I've done a little arithmetic, and I know that 'genteel poverty' makes less money than honest labour. You'd probably break even at best."

"You've done a little research?"

"My interest in the Poles isn't an interest in Poland."

"So you've said before, though not in so many words."

"So I've done a little research."

"Asked nosy questions and gotten answers because you're a bourgeois and not everyone is comfortable telling you to mind your own damned business."

"The government conducts surveys; I sometimes can get hold of the results."

"And what do you think you know?"

"That the average educated workingman, the sort of man who was apprenticed to a trade that is not faltering, is not impoverished and would both understand and benefit from a stake in politics."

"Does that include the compagnons in their constant battles that mark the working classes as incurably violent?"

"They would benefit from a stake in politics, for it would engage them in something far more useful than their internecine warfare."

"'Internecine'? I have no education, you remember."

"That's a lie. 'Internecine': adjective, relating to civil war, particularly a very bloody and acrimonious civil war." Feuilly thanked him, but he shrugged it off. "In any case, your fellow former apprentices may derive a great deal of entertainment and pride from such exchanges, but they do make it difficult for many men to wish to extend the franchise, since the masters were once the brawlers."

"I was never apprenticed to a trade."

Bahorel seemed taken aback. "But surely -"

"I painted fans with Panna Zofia, but neither of us were apprenticed to that trade. No one was. We were all just workers, free to take our knowledge to whoever would have us, not constrained by any brotherhood."

"Free to take your knowledge and starve."

"Free to take up any other knowledge, too."

"The dangerous classes."

"Panna Zofia is hardly dangerous."

"If she weren't so attached to her father, she might have become a courtesan already."

"She's too chaste and holy to have the requisite wit. I assume you are speaking in types, rather than speaking of Panna Zofia herself."

"Of course. I would not insult the lady by suggesting she ought to earn her living on her back. Those who perform such work are necessary, but dangerous, not because they fill the needs the church would like to deny but because they are so ill-used that they have every right to one day rise against us who use them."

"So you do use them."

"Don't you, after your fashion? I can't afford a courtesan, but hasn't everyone scraped together a few pennies to spend in a woman's lap?"

"That's how one gets the clap."

"Spoken like a man who has shared that horrible experience."

"Is there a man who hasn't?"

"I suppose someone must be chaste, or have slept only with a wife who has never played him false. They must exist in the provinces, as I don't think they exist here. Even the priests don't follow their own dictates."

"Are they that corrupt?" Feuilly could not help remembering the look on Sophie's face at Easter when she had told them that Abbé Michel had been waiting for her. Had he done more than leer? Had he grabbed at her the way the men at the workshop sometimes teased the girl? An ordinary Parisian girl would have expected that and not minded, but Sophie was far from ordinary. Had he gone even further? No, he must only have looked.

"If the bishops don't adhere to the 'poverty' portion of the vow, why should the ordinary priest adhere to the 'chastity' portion?"

"You just hate the Church."

"You're right there. I don't hate God, but I'm not terribly fond of his representatives on earth."

"The Church is what we have, and it is composed of men. Very few have become saints." Feuilly stopped before he started lecturing the student. The man had been friendly, and no one ever wanted to hear a lecture on religion when chatting in a café.

"That's true enough," Bahorel agreed. He changed the subject, and they chatted pleasantly enough.

Feuilly always found it strange when Bahorel would chat with him like this, as if they were equals. It was pleasant, and he had an outlet for so many of the things that were crowding his mind that no one else cared to listen to, but it was far from what should have been permitted.

Yet Bahorel obviously did not care what should be permitted, for he was at the café the next Monday, again seeking out Feuilly alone. And though Feuilly remained wary, he pushed a little harder at just what the student might want when he suggested extending the franchise.

"You've heard of Xenophon, right?"

"Of course," Bahorel replied. He didn't snap but he grinned in a way that profoundly embarrassed Feuilly.

"Well, how am I to know what gets taught these days?" He'd had to read them in translation, after all, Thucydides and Xenophon and lately, Rollin's _Ancient History_ in place of the Romans, since the late M. Duzan had kept his Plutarch in Latin. "In any case," he continued rapidly, "I think we're living in Athens under the Thirty Tyrants. We lost our world-shaping war, and our civilisation, and the victors have set up this shaky government to serve the wealthy and keep the rest of us down. If we add up the men with influence with the King, there might be thirty. Am I right?" He kept his voice down, as the local informant was at the other end of the zinc, keeping an eye on the Poles.

"I take your point. But who is our Thrasybulus?"

"I don't know yet. Foy, maybe? Maybe it's too early to tell. The coronation isn't until next month. Our Thrasybulus may not be angry enough yet. It's a petty, weak oligarchy, Athens under the tyrants, taking a free man's rights and imprisoning him without trial, but doing it quiet because it's so damned unsure of itself. One day it won't be a fanmaker," he added half under his breath, "and then we'll see if they have the balls – or the support – to uphold the Charter."

"The King probably believes wholly in Article 57 and little of what follows it. 'All justice emanates from the King'," Bahorel explained in response to Feuilly's confused look. Not everyone was a law student who had the Charter memorised.

"But he can't do without trial by jury. We'll have to know what happened at some point. Any day now, I should think – it's been more than six months. Unless the bastard did succeed in cracking his head open."

"Was your friend actively suicidal?"

"He wasn't my friend, and he seemed to prefer bashing his own brains out to facing the scaffold. Weak little bastard, whatever he did."

"Most men don't want to face the scaffold."

"Then they shouldn't tempt the law with a treason case. You stand your trial, and you march up to your sentence like a man. You have to admit Louvel took his hemlock far better than Castaing."

"Do you go to all the executions?"

"Did as a child. What better fun? But I missed Castaing, heard everything after the fact." The trial and execution of the poisoner had come a little too soon after his own murder for Feuilly's comfort, though it had not stopped everyone he knew from regaling him with the story of the bourgeois who sobbed his way up the scaffold, unable to take his death sentence like a man. "Were you there?"

"Didn't see the point, to be honest. Grubby little murders don't deserve the attention. Went to look at the crowd; left before the dead man showed up."

"And Louvel?"

"Wouldn't have missed that for anything. A crowd roiling with love and hate, even those who agreed with him bitter because the damned miracle child was too far along to be conveniently lost. That and the Lallemand riots – a damned fine summer," he finished approvingly.

"You save your veneration for Brutus rather than Schinderhannes."

"Doesn't any man of sense?"

"Pan Wojciech might not venerate either one."

"I said a man of sense." As Feuilly laughed, he continued, "He might after all. If he wants a return to the old ways, Caesar marks innovation while Brutus does not."

"He was only believed to be planning an overhaul, wasn't he? The Senate took fright at his popularity and ascribed to him a lust for absolute power he may not have had."

"No, he'd already begun to consolidate when the conspiracy took effect. Suetonius is very clear on that."

It was embarrassing to be corrected by Bahorel on a subject that ought to have been elementary. Feuilly quickly changed the subject to the Poles, internally cursing himself for having shown away when he knew he could not really keep up with a man of education.

But when he saw Bahorel the following week, the student told him, "That thing about the Thirty was quite a good point. I shared it with some friends." Though what friends the student meant was debatable, as he had the greenish discolouration of a healing bruise just under his left eye. Had he been involved in last week's brawl outside the barrière Montparnasse? Feuilly wondered. Laforêt had come home last week with rumours that the compagnon smiths had gone to war, and by the next day, the rumours had hit Lapeyre's workshop. A couple hundred men, including some much too well-dressed to have any connections with either of the warring brotherhoods, had congregated off the boulevard Montparnasse and battled for three hours before the gendarmes finally succeeded in breaking up the fight. If Bahorel had loved Lallemand's funeral so much, it was entirely possible he was one of the gentlemen in tall hats and long coats who had joined in the brawlers.

Feuilly was impressed by the compliment, but he hid his pleasure because it would hardly do to take it so easily from such an obviously rash source. "The more fool you. You didn't use my name, I trust."

"They'd like to meet you."

"'Come see the miraculous wallpaper corrector who cites Greek historians on demand!' I'm not a fucking circus act."

"Never meant to imply you were. But think about it. Who else can you make _Hellenica_ references to?"

Feuilly had to admit Bahorel was right. The level of conversation he desired was usually incomprehensible to his equals. Laforêt mostly just let him ramble on, not understanding most of it and not really caring to follow the thread anyway. The Favés had continued friendly, but Feuilly dared not mention anything of real interest, as one could never trust strangers. He was as likely to be a spy as they were, so it was best to continue on neutral lines. And not everyone Bahorel knew was a wealthy student – Feuilly himself was proof of that. As was the bruise under Bahorel's eye. It was more than possible that he meant just the sort of clerks who had a smattering of education and were the next step up from the artisan, really. The sort of men who made their living through literacy but like most skilled workers, would never earn enough to open their own establishments. The sort who might not think themselves too good to watch an execution or watch a compagnon brawl but would hide such tendencies from their employers, as everyone had to pretend they were would-be bourgeois. It was worth consideration. "Then tell me about your friends," Feuilly asked quietly, keeping one eye on the informant.

"What about them?"

"Have you known them long?"

Bahorel shrugged. "What's long? About a year, for the most part."

"Do you trust them?"

"More than you trust me. I swear I haven't told them your name, just how I know you. And that Xenophon isn't your only area of interest or expertise."

"That's enough for them?"

"They trust me. And I'm certain you'll get on better with some of them than you do with me. My parents could afford an education for me, but you're a damned sight more clever than I am. So are my friends."

"Idle flattery only works on girls."

"And don't I know it."

"So how do you know these friends?"

"Same way I know you. Putting my foot in my mouth because a stranger in a café is cleverer than I ever could be."

"I have never once had the better of you in a conversation."

"Which of us, do you think, is on the defensive right now? The chaps I'd like to introduce you to are more the debating kind than the rioting kind. Which is why I think you'd get on."

"So you want me to meet them."

"Told them your analogy so they'd be interested. We don't just chase girls together, and a chap has to be careful who he shares his interests with, right?"

"So you clumsily manipulate them into wanting to see me, and try to use flattery to manipulate me into wanting to see them."

"That's the long and short of it," Bahorel admitted good-naturedly.

"You really do spend most of your time chasing girls, don't you? 'Tell Juliette I think she's twice as pretty as Lisette', all the while thinking, 'God, I hope this works because I'm dying to trade in Mariette'."

Bahorel laughed. "Maybe not most of my time, but a good part of it. When I'm not chasing a fight. Hey, do you know anyone teaching savate? The gym I've been using is closing; the guy who runs it is going back to his wife's village or something."

"Not off the top of my head. Do I look like someone who enjoys organised combat? I wasn't the one joining with the blacksmiths." But he relented, as he preferred to do a small favour than to be written out of estimation. It was servile, perhaps, but it was also the sort of thing true friends would do for each other. "I do have a friend who was a compagnon joiner, and I'll ask him where they train. Or where they used to train in his day, at the very least."

"I appreciate it."

Feuilly finished off his drink. The hour had grown late, and he had to come to a decision, particularly as the informant had started to turn his attention to their direction. Bahorel had been around these circles in Paris for a few years, and while he could be provoking, he was no provocateur, and he could certainly spot one from a hundred paces or more. The cops were, for once, not a primary consideration. And as much as he had complained about not being susceptible as a girl, dammit, he was flattered that an educated man had not only thought his idea worth passing along but had also refrained from taking the credit for himself. Bahorel was acting in good faith – he always had done – and that tipped Feuilly's hand. The student should be encouraged rather than rebuffed in his expressions of equality. Feuilly might as well get the benefits before life killed off Bahorel's idealism. He had known Bahorel almost as long as these friends did, in any case. Their acquaintance predated any interest the police would have taken in his political opinions, so it was unlikely that the entire scheme was a trap. The last few weeks had been clumsy, but Bahorel was about as subtle as his waistcoats. Still, he knew how to keep his voice down and his mouth shut to interesting topics when the informant was around. It was time. "I should go. See you around. Oh, and tell your friends 'yes'. Whenever they want." It was meant to be an offhand addition, but it echoed strangely in his ears.

If Bahorel picked up on any false tones, he said nothing. "I'll let you know when and where. Good night."


	49. Chapter 49

The café was neither so posh nor so derelict as Feuilly had feared. Instead, it was a perfectly ordinary café with a clientele that appeared to derive from the upper levels of the working classes. There was not a smock in sight, but he noticed as many short jackets as tailcoats and an even mix between tall hats and caps. Bahorel's so-called friends, if they were of this sort, would not fault his stained fingers and heavy boots. They were also entirely likely to be paid spies, or at least to be in a position where they could be bought.

Feuilly had been on edge for two days, ever since Bahorel came to Didier's and said, "Wednesday. I'll meet you here. Seven o'clock. You play dice, don't you?" he had added in a tone of such overdone significance than Feuilly dared not answer other than in the affirmative. No signal had been agreed in advance, but with such a display in the presence of their local spy, "dice" the signal would have to be.

He had hardly slept the night before, wishing he could thrash out his worries but daring not move for fear of disturbing Laforêt's sleep. He had been arrested once already. Had he not left Babet's crew largely because it seemed likely to end in a prison term or worse? There was still no sign of what might have become of Aleçon. The guillotine was nothing to fear since it was over so quickly, but the arrest, the trial, the public execution – would these be endurable as a martyr to a cause when they seemed so intolerable as the just punishment he had earned for the crime already committed? And what of the student? Would this alliance prove him more than a dilettante, bring down the law upon him when it might have been avoided? Yet Bahorel had been the one to seek him out, to sound him out, to make the connection. He sought his own destruction, perhaps, or at least did not fear it. Should Feuilly worry for him, or should he allow Bahorel all the consequences of his actions? He was a man, after all, had spent some years taking the first steps on the path he now invited Feuilly to join. He could take whatever punishments were thrown at him. Had he not asked what prison was like so he might better prepare himself when that time came? Yes, he had been clumsy, but not everyone was raised by wolves.

It felt safer with the wolves. Even with Babet's latest turn to some form of open warfare, his overriding goal was to avoid prison. The murders eliminated witnesses or bought protection from men with influence. They were prepared with careful consideration, a deliberate gamble in which, so far, the house had always won. It was an ancient game, the very game that had dictated that a society form laws and a system of justice. Politics were new and always changing. A man could get arrested for nothing.

He had already been arrested for nothing. Doing nothing, saying nothing, and hardly even daring to believe in anything. His greatest dreams, which he now realised had been terribly foolish, never included becoming an elector. The glories of the Empire had not been reserved for orphan boys here at home, so he looked forward to nothing and back to nothing, yet a few men had managed to publish ideas that no one had yet put into practice. And in practice, perhaps someone could have the choices that had not been reserved for him. The dyer's apprentice had become the Duc de Montebello; Feuilly merely wished a boy like Montparnasse could become a dyer's apprentice.

He was a wolf and deserved the punishment he had earned. But was politics the way to earn a reprieve for someone else? He had already been arrested for nothing, so it was easy to say he might as well do what he had been arrested for in the first place. Had he been guilty, he would be in prison now, but only the creatures of the barrières and a handful of sympathetic people came to that conclusion; for the rest, he was at least half a traitor for having worked with one. Where did treason and tyranny and the rights of man fit into salvation? The priests all wanted to become bishops, so they needed this monarchy, this tyrant who thought it better to have a dramatic coronation than to feed the poor. The poor need bread every day, just loaves and fishes, not feasts and circuses once a generation. If man is born free, then liberty comes from God, and a king must answer to God for all he does. For the spies and the favours and the deliberate blindness. His power and our liberty are both subject to God's grace. It had to be true, otherwise there would be no justice and no salvation. In all cases, for himself and for the king, God would determine whether judgment should be tempered with mercy.

But the final decision, to go to Didier's after work, to allow Bahorel to take him to these friends in the guise of a game of dice, was made far less deliberately than his first decision to permit the student some access to his thoughts on the subject. Feuilly had paused at the door, reminding himself that he could leave now, save himself, let the world go on as if nothing had happened. The police had already taken away his best chance in life; did he intend to make another Laforêt of the kind Favés? He walked inside anyway, reasoning that the job would end before the police would have a case to arrest him. He could mitigate the collateral damage now that he saw it coming, a kindness Aleçon had neglected. Laforêt was already more than half lost.

Bahorel waited for him at the zinc, a half-empty glass in front of him as he tried not to watch the door. "Have a drink," he offered Feuilly. "Have you seen today's papers?"

Feuilly accepted the drink, but his eyes narrowed at the question. "Why?"

"The theatre of France is going sadly downhill. The authorities in Rouen elected to suppress a presentation of _Tartuffe_. And the critic for the _Constitutionnel_ said Mlle Dupont was 'not bad'. Not bad! Faint praise of that nature always damns an actress."

"Isn't the Austrian plan for Greece to buy its independence a safer line of discussion?"

"Perhaps. But you've not see Mlle Dupont, I daresay."

"I pay little attention to the theatre reviews since I am so rarely able to see the performances discussed."

"That may be for the best as far as the play is concerned – Mennechet is no Molière – but the girl is well worth the time."

"Says the man who can afford to see her from the pit."

"Say, I'm meeting some friends for a game or two of dice. Not high rollers with seats in the pit, I assure you. Would you like to join us? I doubt they'll bore you with tales of Mlle Dupont's delicate ankle and perfect tits."

Damn him, Feuilly thought. He had not quite relaxed into the conversation, as the presence of the informer had distracted him from his desire to follow just what had happened in Rouen, but he had certainly not expected such a quick turn to the true reason for their meeting. It was still an offer, however, and an offer could be declined. Instead, he said yes.

Thus he now followed Bahorel into this strange café, trying to breathe softly and keep his heart from beating out of his chest. The café was well-populated and spacious enough it would not make a good trap. Feuilly noted the door, the windows, the staircase leading up to a mezzanine or the first floor, and the hallway that must lead to a back room. Trouble would come from that back room or try to herd him into it, he quickly determined with the wolf's instinct rather than his conscious intellect.

"Are we late?" he heard Bahorel ask.

"I am early," a calm voice replied. If only I felt as calm as the man sounds, Feuilly thought. The voice belonged to a young man carefully marking his place in the book he had been interrupted in reading. "Please forgive me," he begged as he looked up from his task. The moment he locked eyes with Feuilly, Feuilly's stomach dropped. The young man's eyebrows lifted just slightly, yet he smiled and offered his hand. "I was terribly rude to have neglected to introduce myself when we met last year. Julien Combeferre." It was the medical student from the Salon.

"You've met?" Bahorel asked in confusion.

"At the Salon. A brief conversation about M. Constable's landscapes," Feuilly admitted. Was it a trap? Should he flee? Should he give a false name? He had not thought to prepare a false name. If it were a trap, a false name would not save him, since the student, if he even were a student, had been sent for him deliberately. It was no crime to have had a conversation about English landscapes, and while it was a crime to be looking for a dice game, it was not the sort of thing to get him arrested. The line he had followed with the police inspector might yet save him again. "I'm called Feuilly. Daniel."

The student's grip was strong and his smile warm. If he were a spy, he was a very good one, and there was no need to waste such a talent on a corrector of wallpaper. "I was sorry not to have seen you at the café des Variétés, yet I cannot blame you in the least. How could you appear when I had never formally introduced myself?" He looked away for a moment, with the briefest shake of his head. "I was profoundly embarrassed when I realised my mistake, I assure you. Please take a glass." Two bottles of wine, one already open, sat on the table along with several clean glasses and the remainder of Combeferre's first glass. "The others should be here at any moment, I think."

"Do we expect Courfeyrac to do anything on time?" Bahorel asked, pouring out a glass for himself. He swung his chair around so he might sit with his legs splayed athwart the back.

"Ordinarily, I might ask that question of you," Combeferre replied. As Feuilly dared not help himself to the offered wine, Combeferre poured a glass for him. "I shall not presume to speak for the others, but I am very glad you have joined us tonight. Our previous conversation was sadly cut short. I hope I did not bore your girl too much. She is well, yes?"

Feuilly stifled his initial impulse to deny that Sophie was his girl. "She's – she's well, yes."

"You've even met Mlle Sophie of Poland?" Bahorel asked incredulously.

"Panna Zofia and Pan Wojciech joined me at the Salon. Our employer asked us to take a look, so Pan Wojciech chaperoned," Feuilly explained. This much had to have been known already, since Combeferre had seen Sophie and must know of her father from Bahorel.

"In her absence, I should very much like to revisit the conversation if it is at all agreeable to you."

"If you're talking about paintings, I'm leaving," Bahorel told them.

"We must entertain ourselves until the others arrive. Shall we discuss sculpture instead?" Combeferre asked, though he ignored any attempt Bahorel may have made to respond. "Did you have a chance to return before it closed?"

"Once more." Unconsciously, Feuilly started working a curl free from the ribbon holding back his hair. His fingers needed something to do as his brain worked double time, trying to parse just what these so-called students were doing. Friends who could not afford seats in the pit, my ass, was the most distinct thought at the surface of his brain.

"And what struck you most on a second viewing?" Though Combeferre had attempted to put this conversation in the realm of small talk, his tone was serious. He had already shown a deep interest in and feeling for the subject, a wealth of knowledge Feuilly craved for himself. He even leaned forward over the table to better hear Feuilly's answer over the din of the dozen other conversations filling the room. It was an innocuous question, the sort of thing that might be used to put a man at ease before sliding in more difficult subjects, yet it had been posed with a sobriety that seemed to seek a truthful response. For the moment, a truthful response would not put him in the law's power. The law did not concern itself with questions of aesthetics.

"Not much," he allowed himself to admit. "I don't mean I could do better, but that they didn't do nearly as well as I thought at first. M. Constable was the only man of genius since the Géricault had been put away. Some were still attractive, but inappropriately so. The massacre you said was by M. Delacroix – the forms are beautiful, but no one dies so prettily."

"I believe it was originally to be a scene of plague victims, repurposed as the politics have changed."

"I've never seen a plague victim, but neither has M. Delacroix."

"You prefer M. Géricault, who went to the morgue and to the hospitals to make his drawings."

"So that's why his painting is the only other one with the ring of truth. Interviews did not get him the same knowledge the morgue did."

"Delacroix may have some potential, I suspect, but Géricault cast something of a shadow over all the grand entrants, did he not?"

"It comes down to the way he managed to accurately paint death. That raw celebration of life. The composition was quite fine, of course, and the modeling of the figures, but Ingres can model figures just as well, even if he prefers the beautiful to the real. I'm not sure everyone understood Géricault's point."

"The celebration of life," Combeferre repeated.

There was no particular moment when Feuilly made a conscious decision to throw caution to the wind, but as the conversation continued, he dropped his reserve. They were speaking of art, not politics, and Combeferre was gratifyingly interested in every word. "I don't mean because they were the survivors calling out for their salvation and the viewer knows there is a happy ending for those still living. I mean because only when life is tested do you really know what life is and how grand it can be. He shouldn't know it himself, but it's there. In any case, it doesn't matter, because he's dead now, and the government wouldn't reward that sort of truth. Is what the papers said true, that his friends had a devil of a time getting the government to buy it?"

"Very true. The rewards must be reserved for landscapes that can offend no one. Astound, perhaps, even shock at times, but not offend."

"Shock? M. Constable's talent is unexpected, yes, but was anyone shocked?"

"What appealed to you so much in Mr Constable's work?"

"It's not staged. The river really looks like that, with the mill, and you end up thinking that the carters and the dog must be natives. They don't look placed. For M. Delacroix, you do not come upon a massacre, but his ideal of a massacre. There was an angry cardinal who might as well have been an actor overdoing his role. The big paintings are all acting something out – even the _Medusa_, since M. Géricault was not there, no matter how many portraits of survivors he included in his great work. But M. Constable has painted an even more plausible reality than M. Géricault, since a man could go to England and find this river and see exactly what M. Constable painted, though the wagon might be long gone and the dog with it. And it's grand. The other landscapes are empty and small, and somehow seem false, like scenery in a theatre where the trees must be placed just so. Maybe it's the towering clouds, or the sketchy brushwork, but this one felt real, like it had love of the place in every stroke rather than just serving as a document of the place, and it did more for me than any cardinal's nauseated victim or any madman conducting a wedding ceremony."

"And that is what is shocking, that a landscape dare be so large, that something so mundane think it ought to double or triple in size to begin a competition with the great history paintings. Still, it is only a landscape, and audacity in landscape is much more forgivable than audacity that involves human figures and true stories."

Bahorel had wandered off at some point, and Feuilly had nearly forgotten that this was not the café des Variétés and he was not participating in an artistic circle. His nervousness gone, he was holding his own in a conversation he had wanted to have since September, whether or not Sophie would approve. "So we are to get copies of M. Constable from now on, rather than followers of M. Géricault?"

"Various historical settings are sure to come back into vogue."

"History isn't truth, though, it's interpretation."

"Is the _Medusa_ really true?" Combeferre asked. "You admit it is staged."

"I suppose we could argue in a philosophical sense if there can ever be an objective truth in the painting of an event the artist did not witness. Or even in one that he did witness but has composed for the canvas from memory rather than from life. But it feels true because it has that emotional connection that, for example, M. Ingres' altarpiece completely lacks. It is more true than Michelangelo's Last Judgment because one must guess at the Last Judgment, while we have testimony from survivors of the wreck of the _Medusa_, but both feel equally true in the emotional content. I'd rather writhe with Michelangelo's damned than sit placidly for M. Ingres because the damned feel something, they're fully human, and only a man who has sinned has used his life fully, can know what choices there are and what they mean and what his body can do and what his soul can bear. M. Géricault had to use survivors and madmen as his models for that reason. The pure are weak, they've tested nothing, and if they've never struggled with resistance, how can they grow strong?"

"The cardinal and his victim you describe, these are M. Delaroche's interpretation of the interrogation of Jeanne d'Arc." Feuilly winced with embarrassment. One should not call one of the great heroes of France a bilious girl, no matter how badly painted. "Here, there should be purity and strength, should there not?"

"But that is to throw out a different argument. Jeanne d'Arc is either a divinely inspired heroine, or she is a peasant girl, and I don't think peasant girls are as pure as you might think them." Lydie was a peasant girl, when it came down to it. "And even then, is that beatification or suffering? She looks like she is suffering a stomach complaint, and I feel terrible for having such a thought about such a figure, but there it is. It is a combination of the two from a girl who cannot act. The whole pageant is rendered false when a central figure is so patently unreal. So it cannot be true on any level, while if the girl were better, it could attain an emotional truth even though the whole thing is presented by people who have third-hand accounts of just what had happened. Of course, everyone is long dead, so it doesn't matter as much as the _Medusa_ or M. Delacroix's Greek massacre, where there are memories and people deeply affected, and we are meant to be deeply affected by these events that were pulled from newspapers rather than from dusty history books. So Jeanne d'Arc has to be looked at differently, really, than the Greek massacre. The Greek massacre has nothing of truth in it, so it fails; the _Medusa_ has a great deal of truth in it, even if it is not wholly true, and therefore it succeeds."

"The best paintings, therefore, are those that are most true."

"Yes. And I hold to that with Michelangelo as well."

"A depiction of the future or a scene from fiction or legend can be, in art, just as true as a scene taken from the newspapers. And by the same token, a scene taken from the newspapers may be as false as any play on the stage."

Bahorel's return cut off any reply Feuilly might have made. It seemed the other young men had arrived. To Feuilly's chagrin, they, too, were students, or at least far better dressed than he had hoped. The knot in his stomach tightened again. The youngest of the four, hardly more than a child, offered his hand immediately. "You must be Bahorel's friend. René Courfeyrac. This is Jean Prouvaire, Jean-Marc Faniel, and Germain Nadal."

Feuilly introduced himself, though the one called Prouvaire did not offer a hand. Prouvaire and Courfeyrac were both small of stature and slight of build, though Courfeyrac had a smile on his heart-shaped face while Prouvaire remained serious. Nadal shared Combeferre's dark complexion, but he remained reserved, and his handshake was weak. Faniel was blond and shared the serious demeanour of his dark brethren, though his handshake was as strong as Combeferre's.

"I hear you already know Combeferre," Courfeyrac said to him, his voice heightened with excitement. Had Bahorel warned them that he might be a spy, or had he alerted the accomplices that the game was suspected?

"A short encounter at the Salon last year, that's all."

"And you remember each other after so much time?" Nadal asked, his speech marked by a strong Spanish accent.

Feuilly tugged at his hair in demonstration. "I'm a hard man to forget."

"So is Combeferre," Courfeyrac replied, his smile widening to a grin, "though he is about to deny it."

"Then you have an interest in art?" Prouvaire asked.

"I wouldn't have been at the Salon if I didn't, now, would I?" Feuilly replied, defending himself against the condescending tone. The boy's face fell, and Feuilly immediately felt sorry for his outburst. They were all trying to feel their way around each other, navigating what might be a coincidence and might be a trap.

"Please have a drink," Combeferre offered, his calm demeanour still unruffled. "We should empty the first bottle."

"I'll check on the back room," Bahorel told him.

"I'm sorry we're late," Courfeyrac apologised to Combeferre. "I nearly couldn't find the place."

"It did not help that he retied his cravat three times before we ever left his flat."

"I did not!"

"I thought I would give you the benefit of the doubt. It is the third knot; he could not perfect the first two."

To Feuilly's ear, Prouvaire sounded like a grass, but Courfeyrac laughed as if it were all a great joke. He was dressed impeccably, so far as Feuilly could tell: the coat alone might have come directly from a fashionable tailor's window. Yet he wore his hair straight and close-cropped like Bahorel, a relic of the Empire. Of course, with his youth, he must have been only lately released from the parental household, and perhaps his parents found curled hair to be ostentatious. The coat could have been made in a few days, after all. At least the boy had more subtle taste in waistcoats than did Bahorel.

"I have given you all night, but I am not sure M. Feuilly can spare so many hours," Combeferre informed his comrades.

"I seem to be here at M. Bahorel's command," he told them. Suddenly feeling daring, as nothing had yet happened and he was certain for the moment that the only spy in their midst could possibly be Combeferre, he added, "Do what you will with me."

"There's a table in back," Bahorel told them. "Someone grab the bottle."

Courfeyrac immediately took charge of the wine, and they made their way down the corridor to the back room. The click of dice and the sound of conversation were soon apparent. This room was smaller and more brightly lit, with a handful of tables around which a number of workingmen were gathered over their games of dice and dominoes. There was no rear door. The occasional clink of coins added to the wager and frequent curses over the turns of the game provided an excellent screen for conversation. Either the young men had more experience than their collective youth suggested, or the spy had been well-trained in deviousness yet could not hide his training.

"How shall we begin?" Combeferre asked in a low voice.

"Maybe you can start by telling me why I'm here. Is it just to talk about art? I can do that. But put some cards on the table."

"Fair enough," Courfeyrac replied. "We're dead glad you came. We need help badly."

"Help in what?" Feuilly asked pointedly. They had to be the ones to say what they wanted. He would not be goaded into giving himself away through flimsy suggestions and implications.

"The situation," Combeferre explained, "is this: the vast gulf between theory and practice will swallow us all, government and opposition alike. We are all too much alike, our backgrounds too similar, our experiences hardly deviating one from the other, and while we know many of our faults, there are surely others that we cannot begin to conceive. If we are all agreed that the political situation as it is cannot stand, then we begin to consider what we might want to replace it. And there you find us at a standstill, for we know what is obvious to us, and yet one has to wonder if it is indeed the best solution for all."

"Are we all agreed that the political situation cannot stand? The king is not yet crowned."

Prouvaire sniffed. "A wasted ceremony. So much money, and for what?"

"They've promised us open theatres and open feasts," Feuilly reminded him.

"Bread and circuses."

"Louis started out believing in the Charter," Courfeyrac said, "or at least he accepted it as the price for his throne. Charles would prefer it burned and the clock turned back. He's just nominated his commission that will decide who gets paid an indemnity we can't afford."

"My parents did well out of the Revolution, paid good money for their lands," said Bahorel. "This makes them look like thieves. My father's an elector, even, god help us all."

Combeferre leaned in closer over the table, looking Feuilly directly in the eye. "We are here, Monsieur, because 1789 was a glorious year, and we believe it will have to be repeated as our monarch has not learned from his brother's example. We want nothing so ridiculous as another infernal machine; rather, we seek allies who might help us pull down the next Bastille, whatever it might be when the time comes."

"And you think I'm one." He started nervously toying with his hair again, for the conversation had reached tricky ground.

"Bahorel believes we have a common interest. For my part, no revolution will be complete without universal suffrage and better access to education. We must be a nation, not a collection of communes, if we are to stand up to Britain's industry and trade, and that requires each man to take part in the life of the nation. We must have a republic, broader and more pure than the first revolution was able to create. Bonaparte may have helped us despite himself, his armies laying the foundations that did not exist under the ancien régime."

"I told them your thoughts on the Poles," Bahorel explained.

"And a metaphor from the _Hellenica,_" Faniel added.

"It was pretty good, Xenophon." Courfeyrac's praise sounded better coming from his bright smile and Southern accent than the words themselves conveyed. "My money's on Foy right now, but I lose more than I win when I gamble."

"For the sake of argument, suppose I expressed agreement with you and not merely with the _Z__ł__ota wolno__ść_," Feuilly presented, shamelessly displaying his admittedly rough grasp of the Polish tongue. He tried to ignore that Bahorel was beaming like a proud father, his find showing off the grand party trick of a workingman speaking a foreign language. He had not come to perform like a monkey, yet he was damned if he'd leave without proving his right to sit at the table with them if they were innocent men. "The Polish adherence to their traditional liberties is inherently conservative, you must agree. I say nothing of which aspects I might or might not wish to see in our country. What would you want from me?"

"Frankly? Information and advice," Courfeyrac admitted. "Prouvaire has connections that get us statistics from the government, but it's like Combeferre said – numbers are averages and therefore support theory more than the practice of daily life. What do the working classes want, what do they need, how do they live, are their opinions as radical as they should be or do they cling to tradition? We must learn the things that are not in the statistics."

Feuilly leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "The price of bread is too high and there is not enough work. That has always been and always will be the truth of the matter, republic, monarchy, or empire. If you haven't figured that out, then you're too stupid to be permitted power, bourgeois families or not."

"Knowledge. Support. A complete alliance of interests." Combeferre, deadly serious, ignored Feuilly's outburst. His low voice seemed to penetrate directly to Feuilly's core, particularly when he added, "And when the time comes, if the time comes, arms in hand."

It was hard to maintain the flippant tone he had decided to adopt in order to shock them, but Feuilly did his best. "You're asking a man to risk his life for a vague possibility. 'If the time comes'. I might as well commit to marching on Warszawa with Pan Wojciech. That's another 'if' that I don't see coming true, unless it's to allow the Russians to stretch them all into long-necked martyrs to a futile cause."

"It is a fair criticism. We all risk our lives in coming together tonight to consider this possibility. I appreciate that risk, and I thank you for it." Feuilly caught what appeared to him a panicked look from Nadal to Combeferre. Combeferre ignored what may have been a warning and continued, "I have every intention of going as far as I might, whether it be to a reconstituted National Assembly free of monarchical influence or to the scaffold. I acknowledge the scaffold to be more likely right now, and I do not lightly extend invitations to join me there. For the time being, we think, we talk, and we educate ourselves with the understanding that the results of these intellectual labours may lead us to share the fate of the Gracchi and their heir Babeuf."

The words might have been scripted by a provocateur, but could he deliver them with such emotion? "What makes you think it's safe to share this intention with me?"

"Bahorel trusts you, and I trust him."

"No questions for me at all?"

Prouvaire opened his mouth but Courfeyrac cut him off. "Don't you have better ones for us? I might have lots of questions, but it seems rude to turn this into an interrogation. I suppose we've got the social right, as technically your betters, but that's profoundly unfair and really no right at all. We don't have to sort out everything tonight. We shouldn't sort everything out tonight."

"I brought you here for an introduction, not a vow," Bahorel insisted, speaking up for the first time all night. "M. Albert brought you in to listen, because he thought you might be biddable. We don't want you to do our bidding, just to agree to listen and to talk if you want to."

"We do not wish to pull just anyone off the street, not because of the danger, but because so few men of any class share our interest in the higher politics," Faniel informed him.

"We seek men of intellect and compassion," Combeferre added, "particularly from that class that is not given credit for such qualities."

"It's flattering that you imply I'm one of them, but you don't know me."

"And you don't know me. But I should like to change that. It is rare to be permitted to speak of Constable and Delacroix and the Charter in the same breath."

Combeferre was either a very good spy or a very good man. Feuilly cursed the coincidence that forced him to treat the student with suspicion, for here was everything he wanted. Bahorel had delivered him everything, without being asked. How well did the man perceive him? Or had he talked to Pan Wojciech about something other than Panna Zofia's prospects? Looking around the table, he saw Bahorel leaning back with arms crossed, satisfied in his success; Courfeyrac's bright grin as he toyed with his empty glass; Nadal watching him in absolute silence with dark suspicion; Faniel's mild observation; Prouvaire abashed or embarrassed, looking at the table rather than at him; and Combeferre's calm but insistent gaze. Nadal's stony silence kept him on edge, and he was glad for it. He could not bear to fall into a spy's hands when the trap had been so carefully set. Was Combeferre the provocateur, moving too quickly and openly for his colleague's comfort? Or did Nadal believe the newcomer a spy in their midst? Had he shown away too much to be trusted by innocent men? What if they were all innocent? Were these really the comrades in treason he would seek? Wide-eyed students and a privileged brawler?

He needed to consider the matter carefully, at length, not while these men waited on an answer. "May I have some time to consider just what you are asking for?" he asked, holding back a wince as he realised he was giving away his sympathies simply by requesting a delay. A man who did not wish to assert the right of rebellion would have left by now. "I've no taste for regicide," he insisted, feebly trying to cover his tracks.

"Neither do I, if there are other ways," Combeferre agreed.

"As far as I'm concerned, he can go back to England," Courfeyrac added.

"Please take all the time you need," Combeferre instructed him. "You can always reach us through Bahorel."

"As long as the Poles keep talking about Golden Liberty and black swans, I'll be there for the entertainment."

"Shall I see you out?" Combeferre offered. Feuilly nodded his assent. Had he done enough that he would be seen all the way out to the mairie? He would be arrested anyway, whether or not he accepted the courtesy, so he allowed the young man to do the thing quietly.

At the door, Combeferre stopped. "Please forgive us for any missteps we may have made tonight. I believe we are all feeling our way as blind men, uncertain of just what we might find. We are kept apart too much, dissuaded from conversation with any who are not exactly like us, and the results are terrible for everyone. We are all in need of correction." He looked away again and smiled. "And now I have made an utter fool of myself."

There would be no arrest tonight, Feuilly realised. Combeferre's apology was hardly the prelude to a visit to the mairie. "I don't know that I was any better," he found himself saying, wanting to believe in the truth Combeferre had spoken. "Could you apologise to the little one for me, monsieur? He's probably used to deferential peasants, so he did not realise he might give offense. One should not return accidental rudeness with deliberate incivility. I may be uncultivated, but I'm not a beast." Prouvaire could go on thinking him a beast, for all Feuilly cared, but he did not want Combeferre to think him so low. Even if Combeferre proved a spy, Feuilly wanted to be worthy of the attention. A man had to climb the scaffold without giving up his honour.

"Prouvaire can be shy. I cannot say that anyone should not mind what he says, but I think we are all capable of making obvious, and ridiculous, statements when nervous. I will pass along your apology."

"He's nervous because I'm not like him, because he thinks I'm going to rob him, or because he thinks I'm probably too much of an idiot to follow the train of conversation?" Or because he fears I am on to your plot against me, he added silently.

"Because, like the rest of us, he fears you won't like us."

"I'm sorry I never came to the Variétés."

"As am I."

"We were cut off before you could tell me your true opinion of the Salon. A full evening encouraging me to make a fool of myself with half-baked ideas, and hardly a word of yourself. Come, let me at least hear your verdict."

"We are mostly in agreement, I believe. A perfection of line is admirable for clarity, but it is little good without emotion behind it. I admire M. Delacroix's daring, but I do not think he has yet arrived at the marriage of line and love he seeks. Yet I think I give M. Delaroche more credit than you do, for how can a model trained for the classical style bring emotion to the way she sits? Cardinal Beaufort is somewhat better, though strangely the best of all is the scrivener in the background, perhaps because he has less training as a model. There is a sadness in how he fulfills his duty that I found quite touching, and perhaps M. Delaroche will be able to bring more of that to the foreground if painting continues to move away from the strictness of classicism. A man of genius must still work with ordinary materials; it can take time for them to become as extraordinary as his ideas. A corpse has no ideas of its own, and neither does a madman when it comes to art, so M. Géricault had an easier task. I hope those men most criticised by the _Journal des Débats_ are able to overcome these difficulties; only then will we know if we indeed have succeeded in returning life to art. These are not exactly individual thoughts; the reviewer for the _Journal de Paris_ has much the same opinion, though with greater knowledge than either of us bring. He at least claims to have been to Italy, to truly know what he speaks when he compares to the Italian masters of old."

Feuilly thanked him for his explanation. Combeferre had been prepared very well to fulfill this mission – who other than Pan Chrzyszczewski or his daughter could have told the police so much of how he felt about the pictures other than the Constable? The requirement for such preparation did make him seem more innocent to Feuilly's mind. He was not a target worth so much police effort.

Combeferre offered his hand. "I'm glad to have met you again. It has been a pleasure, monsieur."

It was a polite fiction, Feuilly was certain. He had been defensive all evening, or else had ended up showing off, neither of which could have been at all pleasant for the wealthy, educated young men who had invited him. But he accepted the proffered hand and bid the student good night. He dared do nothing more without serious thought and prayer. The initial impulse to friendly relations that he had felt at the Salon had to be tamed, else he would end on the scaffold he deserved far sooner than he would prefer.


	50. Chapter 50

"Combeferre wants to see you."

"Why, so I can offend him again?" They were with the Poles again, of course. Feuilly had spent the past several days agonising over just how Bahorel and Combeferre intended to trap him, to the point he had bumped into the girl at Lapeyre's when she was trying to bring him a fresh tray of paint, spilling the brilliant green pigment down the front of her apron. She cursed him out for it in more virulent terms than he had expected, which at least proved she could and did talk. Several bouts of prayer later, at his parish church of St-Leu and his beloved Notre-Dame, had left him still entirely undecided about how to proceed, but he had reduced Combeferre and Bahorel's guilt from "probable" to "possible". Even if he assumed Bahorel was the first spy, with Combeferre his colleague, not even Bahorel had known he was to be at the Salon that day. Once he reached that conclusion, which came when kneeling before the rail at St-Leu the evening after the fateful meeting, he could no longer wholly believe in anyone's guilt. A read through the reviews in the _Journal de Paris_ proved it to him – the reviewer hardly spoke of Constable and said not a thing about Jeanne d'Arc's scrivener. Whenever he tried to present the evening over again to himself, assuming the innocence of all parties, he was profoundly embarrassed by his behaviour. He should have played better into a presumption of innocence rather than immediately begun sheltering himself from unproved police provocation. As for taunting the bourgeois, it had been a defense as much against the police as for his own self respect.

"I'm serious. And it didn't go nearly as badly as you think. The look on Prouvaire's face!" Bahorel laughed. "Look, Combeferre wasn't offended, and he isn't the arm twisting kind. For all I know, he just wants someone to rehash the Salon with. He says Sunday, meet him at Lérin's, outside the barrière Saint-Mandé, after noon. He'll wait until one o'clock, then start walking toward Nogent-sur-Marne. Think about it. I'm just the messenger this time."

Feuilly told himself he would not be at some bourgeois student's beck and call. Still less would he give a day to a possible police spy. Sundays were sacred. But he received no invitation to visit the Chrzyszczewskis after mass, and he was curious to see just what trap had been laid for him by the unlikely police agent, so just before one o'clock, he looked in at Lérin's.

Lérin's was a very shabby little café in Saint-Mandé, serving the suburban workers and the workers from inside the barrière who wanted to get a little drunk on their way to the pleasure gardens and dance halls. On a Sunday afternoon, the clientele was older than of an evening, though a few young faces were scattered about. The worst cafés generally had more hard drinkers than flirting revelers at that time of day. Feuilly had to look around for Combeferre, as there was a good mix of Sunday coats among the labourers' smocks, but soon enough he saw his quarry bent over a book. Few newspapers were seen at Lérin's, and here Combeferre was reading a book. Or not reading, as he looked up with the jerk of one who has been falling asleep over his work. He had seemingly not shaved in a couple of days, and his eyes were heavy with fatigue. But he did not look around and went straight back to his book. Was he indifferent to his surroundings, indifferent to the meeting he himself had requested, or was he merely putting on a careful show of indifference? He was not putting on a show of exhaustion – that much looked perfectly natural.

Was such indifference good or bad? Feuilly asked himself. Would he prefer Combeferre watch for him, wait expectantly? Was it good or bad that he had selected such a dive? He had not seemed the type to turn up for an appointment exhausted and unshaven, but Feuilly had only met him twice before. Did this appearance betoken a disregard for the meeting or a strong regard for the meeting, that he turned up even when he may have preferred to nap on a hot Sunday? Would such a well-prepared spy look so ill-prepared for such a meeting? Would it be kinder for Feuilly to just slip out unseen, or should he at least say something?

Deciding that as he had already come, he could not be such a heel as to disappear on a man his evidence made out to be plausibly innocent, Feuilly went up to Combeferre, who greeted him with what appeared to be a genuine smile through his obvious fatigue.

"I am glad you could come. Is it too far out of your way? Please forgive me if so."

"I've been here plenty," Feuilly told him. It stretched the truth a bit, but it was not entirely a lie. In better days, he had been to the dance halls of Saint-Mandé once with Laforêt, and they had taken their liquid courage from Lérin for less than the hall manager would charge, but they had more frequently gone to Bercy to be soundly rejected by the girls. "I can come back another time, if you'd rather."

"No, I am grateful you have come at all. I fear we did not make the best impression the other night, and I am profoundly sorry. We are rank amateurs, with no right to ask any man to risk himself for us." He stifled a yawn.

"You are forgiven. Are you sure you'd rather not go home?"

"Yes. Do you mind if we walk and talk? It has been, if I may use a nautical expression, all hands on deck at the hospital. A carter lost control and ran into a market crowd this morning, for which a runner was sent to wake me." He yawned again. "I was glad to be called in, for there were several fractures of interest and I believe I was able to render welcome assistance, but five o'clock is a very early hour of the morning. I have begun to feel, rather than merely comprehend, the affection for the weekly holiday."

"Try doing some heavy work, regularly beginning at five in the morning, and then maybe you can start to understand Holy Monday as well."

"The theory is sound, I grant you, but does not the practice derive instead from the overindulgence of Sunday? The stories one hears impute such childish motives to the working classes, and the men who end up in hospital of a Monday do seem to prove the case."

"Whereas your people can get roaring drunk on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday without ever bearing real consequences." Combeferre may have lacked Nadal's suspicion, but he compensated with a condescension of a different type, though no less deep, than Prouvaire's. He had asked for correction the previous evening, so Feuilly felt few qualms in letting his tongue run free for the moment.

"We all bear consequences in our health, though perhaps the bourgeois, the student, the clerk have fewer deforming accidents as a result of their drunkenness. Tell me, I beg you, do you take offense at what I say because I am so profoundly wrong or because you quite rightly feel you must defend your own people, even if I am right?"

"The ideas must come from somewhere," Feuilly admitted, "but they usually apply only in part and only to a minority, while your people take them as the gospel definition of the rank and file."

Combeferre indicated a wildflower at the side of the road. "_Nigella damascena_ is generally a bright blue like this specimen, but it is sometimes found in pure white as well. Both are true wild forms, found in nature, untouched by human breeding. But a man who has never seen a white nigella can be excused for thinking such a thing does not exist. He has never seen it, so how can he know differently? You might tell him to open his eyes, but the information you expect him to take in is not there unless you lead him to it. If you do not show him the white one, if you do not tell him the philosopher who has documented it, should you curse him for his blindness?"

"Are you really saying that sober, honest workers are as rare as a white nigella?" Feuilly asked incredulously. "And that it's my job, as one of them, to point them all out to the ignorant who think we're really just drunken criminals at bottom, waiting to strike?"

"I'm actually suggesting that it is my job. It must be set down, spoken by those who are trusted, iterated thousands of times, before it can begin to contend with the easy lie that has passed for the truth of generations. Only then is there a chance that the average worker may one day be trusted with universal suffrage. And after the worker, we must consider the peasant, who comes from the same stock but without any of the advantages of education."

"We don't have the advantages of education – it isn't something we're given. I'm damned lucky I was able to take the little I have."

"I don't mean Latin, though greater literacy in general will only help, but you know the experiences of life are worth more than two-thousand-year-old speeches. You live among a wide variety of people. You are taught a trade. You learn how to get on with the boss, the fellow worker, the neighbour, the merchant, the café owner, the police. The peasant knows the bailiff, perhaps a cabaret owner, perhaps a peddler. His world is so constricted, he hardly conceives of the landowner to whom his rent goes, while the worker can at least imagine the industrialist and likely has seen him and had some form of interaction with him. Any town is a bigger world than the village, and it is the narrow village life that renders a man stupid, unable to think. His challenges are natural, so he cannot conceive of politics. His family is large, so he cannot conceive of the nation. Or so my researches in Provence lead me to believe is the state of the average peasant, at least of that region. Do you find the same true of newcomers to Paris?"

It seemed to explain a lot about Lydie, Feuilly thought, but she was a woman and did not entirely count. "The worker and the bourgeois have the same opinion of the peasant, at least," he allowed.

"And yet a man who has managed to get himself a hectare of land will find more sympathy with the current government than the hard-working city worker because the nobility is still obsessed with land. It is ridiculous. My family sold out their holdings long before the Revolution so they could put the proceeds into commerce for a better return – and yet other commercial men sink their proceeds into less remunerative land so they might set themselves alongside men of official rank. Commerce provides the betterment of mankind in general, and of more men in particular, than agriculture ever can. Particularly agriculture as it is practised in this country, where there are communes that have never seen a plow. Commerce is the only help to the seaside villages."

"Are they as close-minded as the average peasant?"

"When they leave their villages for work, they join the navy or the merchant crews. A man may sail around the world, learn Malay before he learns French, and thus have a better sense of the world on the whole than the Auvergnat builder, even if both work only so they may afford to go home and raise a family in their ancestral place on the spoils of the wider world. I have great respect for the seamen."

"Because you know them."

"Perhaps. And that is why I need your help, if you are willing to take such a chance. My researches, such as they have been, have been close to home. I come from Marseille, where my family own a shipping firm, so I know fishermen and sailors better than I know tenant farmers. My friend Henri has been making connections with the labourers of his father's enterprises and with the clerks who form what could be called the educated working class, the men who may one day work their way up to a rank at which they might see a chance at the vote if suffrage were expanded to the lower ranks of property holders. But Marseille is not Paris, and our connections outside our own social class are quite minimal. I know I see only the extremes at the hospital, and I try to remind my fellow externs that we hardly have a proper window on the working classes, but one ought to proceed with a guide. As the Indians of America explain their tribes to our curious travelers, a member of the working classes is best placed to describe his fellows, to explain the average worker and the deviations from that average."

"You've got me pegged all wrong." Christ, where was Feuilly to start? He should have turned around and walked away at the first mention of Holy Monday, or the tale of the wildflowers, rather than have given Combeferre the benefit of the doubt. He might have some sympathies, but he was a thorough bourgeois who had no business promising universal suffrage, much less education. At least he was patently not a spy, since no true bourgeois would be well enough in with the police. "First, we aren't fucking Indians: we're as French as you are. Our women cook your food and our men pour your wine. We sit in the same theatres and hear the same plays. Some of us go to the same churches and we all worship the same God. Except the Jews, of course, but I'm no expert on them. You're not a Jew, are you?" He was dark like a Jew, and he had just admitted that his family preferred commerce to landholding. "Not that it matters. Well, you couldn't be, anyway, if you're really at the medical school. Second," he pushed ahead, unwilling to permit Combeferre to get a word in and distract him from what needed to be said, "if you're looking for average, you've got the wrong man. Average would be closer to my flatmate, who had a family, who was taught a little reading and writing, was set to an apprenticeship, and came to Paris on his tour of France. And he doesn't give a damn about politics because they are what got him arrested and that's all they are. High thinking isn't something for us. I can't decide if he's afraid of me or for me, and I don't even really talk politics with him. The average worker does not think, but me, I can't stop thinking, I can't stop wanting. So I'm no good to you, and I wouldn't be even if we were different species, which we quite patently are not. Hell, in Paris, we've even given up the patois that separate us, so we all speak the same language. You've no excuse for the rubbish you're trying to push at me."

"I am sorry for the Indian comment. You are right, we can get nowhere if we think ourselves such separate creatures that we barely have our own humanity in common. Perhaps you are exceptional – Bahorel thinks so – but is that a valid objection?"

"You wouldn't take a mountebank's dog as the scientific embodiment of the species."

"But it does prove the heights to which many, if not most, members of the species are capable and thus adds to our sum knowledge of dogs in general." Combeferre paused for a moment, confusion in his dark eyes. "Are you calling yourself a trained dog?"

"Maybe I am. Maybe I just parrot things I've read and don't actually understand them. Maybe this whole thing is a game, and I'm too ignorant to figure it out. Bahorel said you just wanted to talk about the Salon or something, but even that could be a trap. The police aren't this clever or this enterprising, and I haven't done anything to merit a spy of this much skill put on me, but that doesn't mean you don't have a game of your own. Your people wouldn't dare let me go on, not if you knew what I wanted. You already called me an Indian, but maybe I'm even less, just a trained dog walking on his hind legs for your amusement."

Combeferre still looked calm, damn him. How could he be so calm when Feuilly was roiling inside, when he was throwing insults even an idiot could catch? It was such a release to be able to say these things, yet the steady way with which Combeferre received it all left a taste of bile in his mouth. "What is it you want?" Combeferre asked in a friendly manner Feuilly knew he did not deserve. "Revolution? I want it, too. The revolution that was begun and abandoned, promised but faltered."

Feuilly shook his head. "You couldn't possibly understand," he snapped. "I don't want to overthrow you; I want to join you. To be you," he emphasised. That was really the crux of the matter. He had been drawn to Combeferre even before he knew the man's name because even as an anonymous medical student at the Salon, he had been everything Feuilly had once wanted for his own life. Education, breeding, the right to have enthusiasms, the probability of a distinguished career earned by his intellectual work rather than merely his bare hands – these, not the details of how to achieve them, were the wild dreams he had so stupidly shared with Lydie.

"To be me? No, you don't," Combeferre corrected sadly.

"Maybe that is looking too high, but what I wouldn't give to have been born to a prosperous shopkeeper or the middle range of notary or someone of that nature. Warm all winter, fed all year round, enough money I could have had a decent education and maybe even recognition of my talents so maybe I could have apprenticed to a fine artist, have my own work in the Salon instead of trying to sell naked pictures to cheap printers. It's your people and the government who buy paintings, and you buy from your own, not from people like me who can barely afford watercolours. And who can blame you? I may not like M. Ingres' model for his altarpiece, but I know I can't do any better than the master because no one will teach me. And what does it really matter when I and everyone around me are no better than trained dogs, trained by your people to pull your loads and do flips for your enjoyment and never, ever be seen to beg for the scraps you throw us from your well-laden table?" He stopped himself before going any further. Why did he feel compelled to spill all this at Combeferre, whom he had only met twice and in circumstances that proved he was no more an ordinary bourgeois than Feuilly was an ordinary member of the working classes? And he had been so kind, Indian metaphor notwithstanding. What must Combeferre think him? An angry, no-account radical, an unemployed workman of no talent worth paying for, insisting on castles in the air because he could never have them here on the ground. A complaining fraud, full of hate for himself and the laziness he tried to blame on his betters. A man driven only by jealousy, not by any greater sense of the true rights of man. "Christ, I'm sorry," he apologised. "I don't know what's gotten into me."

"Your apology is accepted, but this is precisely the sort of thing I need to hear. What are other men's dreams, what makes them so impossible, how can we change those failures into the successes that might serve us all better?"

"I've made enough of an ass of myself already." Could he ask that the entire conversation be forgotten? Bahorel had given him such a gift, and he had destroyed it almost immediately. "I should just go. Where the hell are we?" They had been walking all through their long talk, and in the countryside, where he had never been comfortable, Feuilly was completely lost.

Combeferre looked around, running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. Finally, using his hat, he gestured at a clump of trees in the distance. "I believe that is M. Bellouet's orchard. Why don't we beg the shade of his trees, buy some of his fruit, and better prepare for the walk home? This heat feels more like Marseille than Paris so early in the season. If you would rather disappear as quickly as possible, having told so many necessary truths, we have taken no turnings, so the road will simply lead you back through Saint-Mandé. But I recommend stopping for water, at least, in this heat."

It had been an unusually hot day, and the shade of the orchard was nearer than the guinguettes of Saint-Mandé. He was thirsty, and it would be impolite to further offend Combeferre by declining the invitation, so Feuilly silently fell in with the plan.

Sitting under M. Bellouet's peach trees, bareheaded to catch the most benefit from the slight breeze, Combeferre changed the subject back to art. Occasionally he would break off if a butterfly or a bird caught his eye, but Feuilly did not mind. The conversation felt more personal and less judgmental than their attempt to come to an understanding of under just what circumstances Feuilly should help anyone. Here in the orchard, he was no longer a representative of anyone but himself, and there was no argument to be had, no power to contend with, in a friendly rehash of the Salon. It was easy to like Combeferre in conversation of this nature, where he neither assumed too much knowledge nor condescended too much to a preconceived ignorance.

But as Feuilly revived, Combeferre started to fade. There was dried blood on his cuffs, Feuilly noticed – it must have been quite an ordeal at the hospital. "Take a nap," he finally ordered. "I can find my own way back."

"I am glad you came. You have given me a great deal to consider." He again looked away and smiled, a gesture Feuilly was coming to realise was a sign of embarrassment. "I'm sorry I have made such a poor impression."

"Shouldn't I be the one apologising? I know better than to use rough language and to take so much offense at what is said as opposed to what is meant."

"I believe I deserved far worse. I did not mean to suggest that the upper and working classes are different species, but I can see how a comparison to primitives must be galling. I am sorry. Perhaps I should have said Chinamen instead; they are a clever people, but with their own language and customs."

"I'm no Chinaman, either."

"I shall remember that. The worker is French; it is the peasant who does not comprehend that we are all the same people, the same nation."

"I'll accept that."

"Thank you." He yawned. "I am sorry. I fear I have not been myself today. I did not wish to break the engagement, and you have given me much to consider."

"Sleep here if he'll let you, and walk back to town at dusk. How often are you at the hospital?"

"Every morning and evening. It is a great honour to have been selected to perform such work. Ordinarily, I should not see night duty until I might be appointed intern, but last night proved exceptional."

"Which hospital?"

"Cochin, over by the Observatory. There are only two interns, so a runner was sent for a few of us to help them. But I shall say no more about it – bandaging broken legs and cracked ribs is tedious to describe, and I have no wish to bore you. Thank you for your concern."

Feuilly took his leave. It had been a strange afternoon, all things considered – did Combeferre really not hold his outburst against him? It was easier to forgive the student when he simply had not known any better and had so carefully explained that very problem. He wanted to learn and sought correction and at least claimed to understand the anger and jealousy Feuilly had stupidly allowed to boil over. Perhaps Feuilly had not ruined everything with suspicion and defensiveness. From the end of the alley of peach trees, he called back, "You don't need to use Bahorel as your messenger. I drink at Didier's, in the impasse Basfour. Porte-Saint-Denis. Just listen for the Poles."


	51. Chapter 51

"Have you ever met someone who was so enthralling that you just had to know them, even against your better judgment?" Feuilly asked Laforêt when the boy had returned home from wherever he spent his Sunday evening. "I don't mean a girl, mind: this isn't falling in love. Just a friendship you probably shouldn't make."

"You mean other than you?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I. I told you Aleçon thought you were a fancy boy, which should have kept me away, right?"

"And I've made plenty of offers for you to get out since," Feuilly agreed. "But that's not what I meant. Or is it? Hell, what do I know anymore?"

"This isn't about going to back to your people, is it?" Laforêt asked suspiciously.

"No, you're perfectly safe on that score. Whatever I do or don't do, you won't be implicated as an accomplice." He swore he would keep Laforêt out of it however he might if the boy did not want to be tied up in politics again.

"If it's not robbery, then it's politics. Is anyone in this world interesting enough to go to gaol for? Maybe the Emperor. Maybe. But he's dead."

"And if he weren't, I'd be more inclined to give him a piece of my mind. If he hadn't invaded Russia, we wouldn't have had Cossacks camped on the Champ de Mars. Sure, they were more interesting at first than the rest of the occupying army, but there were only so many times you could watch them salt their brandy. They weren't entertaining drunks, just barbarians who thought they owned Paris. No, it's no conqueror of nations, just a medical student who has a few like opinions on modern art and enjoys the discussion. He's also obviously a bourgeois who needs some sense knocked into him on all other subjects, like the rest of his class."

"They could all use it, yes, but I can't imagine it would ever be worth the trouble. Let it alone, and let them do their politics themselves."

It was the right advice, Feuilly acknowledged, because the best advice was always what a man never did himself. The best thing Laforêt could have done was never speak to Feuilly in the first place, to continue to let the outsider remain outside the fold. Yet had there not been a friendship between them already, would he have exerted so much effort for an innocent near-stranger once they were arrested? Much of what he had done had been to save his own skin, but he had done more than strictly necessary. He had looked out for the boy rather than merely bought his compliance. Feuilly knew intellectually that it must have cost Laforêt quite a bit to maintain the friendship after the unfortunate incident of the _cadets_, but he could not be sure he properly felt the gratitude Laforêt must have expected from him. In a way, he still felt himself Laforêt's superior, his understanding of the world far ahead of a law-abiding former compagnon who had left the brotherhood because he was too weak for the battles. He felt himself M. Combeferre's superior, too, in the same sense: what could a bourgeois student know of the important things in this world? Yet he was certain the bourgeois pitied him in the same manner, for a worker could put on only the semblance of knowledge, a mask just like his brother the criminal wore, only the worker mistook his false face for a changed one, the poor, deluded man. Bahorel was different. He was a peasant with money, of a background little different to the millions of workers who left their paternal farms to learn a trade and make their way unchained to the weak soil. M. Combeferre had spoken of his father's enterprises, a bourgeois through and through.

Laforêt was right – the bourgeoisie would never accept that they did not know everything about everything, that they were just as blind as the nobility and the working classes they excoriated in their so-called liberal newspapers. Bahorel was the man in the middle his friends were really looking for, the peasant educated among the bourgeoisie and the remains of the nobility. If sense could be knocked into M. Combeferre, it would have to be by Bahorel. Feuilly washed his hands of the matter and told himself he had done better than Pilate. The stakes were so low, it was impossible to do worse than the Roman.

Yet he did not feel particularly free of M. Combeferre.

Whilst ostensibly reading a history of France from the Gauls to Philippe I, a relic of M. Duzan's youth, Feuilly realised he had been going about the matter all wrong. Laforêt was not perhaps the man to have asked about such things. Upon consideration, Feuilly realised that the boy had no friends other than himself. Though he was rarely cut or called out by men he knew at dance halls and cafés, no one had ever, in Feuilly's presence, joined Laforêt or invited him to join them. The break from his brotherhood had been as complete as Feuilly's breaks from Babet's crew. If Laforêt had indeed made himself an outsider, then it was no wonder he did not follow his own advice. The fellow outsider was his only chance to make a new friend. And if Feuilly had been a fancy boy, then he would not care so much that another man had failed his test of manhood and retreated from the field.

Now Feuilly worried that he was too soft in nature, that Aleçon's belief that he was less than a man had been based in some truth he had perceived, that Feuilly must look like a weak bastard who would not hold another man's weakness against him. Paints and intellectual pursuits were for the bourgeois and the nobles, not for the soldiers of the Empire nor for the men who toiled with their hands, backs bent to labour. They were the interests of the weak, were they not? He suddenly longed for Bahorel to correct him, that bourgeois outsider who had too much of the peasant's physicality to really belong with his social fellows. Bahorel would be honest with him, would admit if that weakness had been why he had marked Feuilly out.

The people he liked best were all outsiders – Laforêt, Bahorel, the Chrzyszczewskis, Mme Mirès, even Vivienne – outsiders in scattered ways, but all something apart from their expected society. Had he been too abrupt in condemning the rest of Bahorel's friends? Despite their clothes and the quality of their speech, they, too, might not be deserving of the well-earned opprobrium he reserved for the bourgeoisie. One was a Spaniard, after all – was he something of a Napoleonic refugee like the Chrzyszczewskis? Bahorel's assortment of revolutionaries could be a society of misfits, picked up in cafés in the same way he had met Feuilly, rather than acquaintances from school as Feuilly had suddenly feared upon meeting them. Feuilly liked the idea of such a pattern as it put him in a sort of equality with the rest. But he dared not fully believe in it, even if it was what Bahorel had initially told him. Bahorel acted for his own amusement, as was his right, and it was no good asserting self-aggrandising motives to the student picking him out of a café of refugees. Misfits or not, Bahorel's friends were socially inappropriate companions. They must see weakness in his pretensions to academic attainments and would laugh as much as Lydie had should he admit to studying Euclid. The mathematics of shapes had proved very helpful to his fine work, but his work was laughable, too, from a man of such low birth.

Yet the more he thought along these lines, the more he wanted Bahorel himself to sort it out for him. Any man who cheerfully admitted that his family spoke patois at home was not firmly attached to his bourgeois status. Bahorel's friendship, if friendship it could be called, despite the missteps of his bourgeois friends, had been growing more and more acceptable by the minute. Feuilly would find the student and ask just what sort of outsider or insider they all were and make a quick end of it. And if the informant were there, so much the better – it would keep them to the real matter at hand, without detours into politics.

But Feuilly did not go to Didier's that night, for fear of meeting M. Combeferre. He regretted having made the invitation to seek him out. It would be better to confirm Bahorel's intentions so that he might not again walk unarmed into a discussion with the medical student. Instead, he would make the long detour later in the week and hope to find Bahorel there in his absence, ingratiating himself with Pan Chrzyszczewski.

This plan received new momentum under the unfortunate setback of the following day. As Feuilly finished setting up his station, an unfamiliar middle-aged man, in a shabby coat, was greeted fondly by Ricard and Voyer and taken over to see Lapeyre. The new man proved to be an old one.

"Nevers is back."

Feuilly's jaw dropped. "This is my notice? This is his notice?"

"It's early enough in the day you'll pick something else up. I'm sorry, but what can I do? I made promises to the man two months ago."

"And though he has no consideration, you can't go back on your word." He sighed. It had been too good a thing, and he had known it could not last, but the end was not supposed to be so abrupt. "Thank you for taking a chance on me in the first place."

"Good luck."

Feuilly very much wanted to tell Lapeyre to go fuck himself, that no one appreciated getting sacked before the workday even began, but he held his tongue and played his part. The man knew the proprietor of the café where the best jobs were likely to come from, and Feuilly knew better than to jeopardise his future for a momentary satisfaction.

Manoury was not at the café that morning, either. "On a job," the proprietor said. "Sit down, have a drink. It's the best I can do for a disappointed man."

He was a disappointed man. He had, in the space of three days, ruined his only chance for the sort of relationship he had wanted since the days he ran with the printers' boys, talked himself in and out of that friendship, and lost the only job he had had in months that had any respect for his talents. He accepted the drink. At least his credit was still good at Didier's, but could an unemployed man really approach a student about important philosophical matters? The moment had passed. He certainly could not risk seeing M. Combeferre again; the pity would be unbearable.

At least Manoury was back at the café the following morning, ready to give a bit of sympathy in the form of a rough "hard luck, my boy" and the offer of a share in the next job going in which he needed an assistant. The pay was never good on those jobs, but it was something. Feuilly had not yet dared tell Laforêt he had been sacked. Since Easter, Laforêt had gone back to carving his trinket boxes, this time with a crown over a fleur-de-lys on the lid, with the date of the coronation and the name of the king surrounding it. They were going for five francs a dozen wholesale, but the lettering was particularly difficult, so he could only complete perhaps three a day. If Feuilly could manage to pick up something within the week, perhaps he would not have to admit the setback to their fortunes.

By Friday, however, he had picked up nothing but a ceiling job with Manoury. He liked the ceiling job, however, as it for once used his talent for detailed brushwork. Instead of merely hauling buckets, he was standing on the ladder himself, using various pale shades of blue to bring out the details of the ceiling medallions. He was only to earn a franc for the difficult work, for painting above one's head was very different to painting something one bent over, but it at least felt like proper work. It was on the back of Manoury's praise for his talents that Feuilly finally went back to Didier's, knowing that he had earned a drink and little thinking that Bahorel might be there.

As the days had passed, Feuilly had grown more and more annoyed with his situation. He had hardly made enough money to eat, and neither had Laforêt. His thoughts shuttled between his lack of work and the result of his meeting with Combeferre, and somehow it came together as Bahorel's fault. To have been sacked two days after having dared admit much too personal ambitions to the medical student felt like a punishment, or perhaps a joke, as if God wished to remind him that he had strayed too far from the most appropriate path. And it was Bahorel's fault, throwing Combeferre at him again after he had already resisted the first invitation.

Combeferre seemed to have everything Feuilly wanted. How could Bahorel have known so much of his idle desires? Pan Chrzyszczewski? How could Pan Chrzyszczewski perceive so much? Did Sophie spill everything to her father? But no, to tell him so much would be to admit that the conversations had taken place, that there was affection enough for her to remember such details. But why should Sophie tell Bahorel anything? How could she tell Bahorel anything without telling her father?

And more than that, how dare Bahorel decide it was his place to give him anything? Why should he be delivered up to Combeferre? By what right? Were they trying to rescue him? A conversion mission to take the half-heathen and make him as Christian as possible when no one else would have him as anything other than a savage? No better than the Hottentot Venus, his prodigious growth in his head but good only for display, not for any proper use, all the interest in him redounding to his discoverers.

So when Bahorel was already there when he arrived at Didier's, Feuilly broke straight into an angry round of questions. "How dare you interrogate Pan Wojciech behind my back and spill everything to your friends! Did you think I wouldn't figure it out? How thick do you think I must be at bottom? What does he want, to dissect me?"

"Hold on, calm down. Have a drink. Who are you talking about wanting to dissect you?"

"Who do you think?"

"Combeferre only dissects the dead. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not entirely sure what happened on Sunday, but it can't have been worse than the time he was flirting with a girl at a dance hall and proposed a systematic study of the ambitions and outcomes of female servants' careers."

"So even the girls are subjects to be sliced open. How is that to make me feel better?"

"I heard he called you an Indian in so many words. And he's profoundly embarrassed by his behaviour. Again."

"So you do know what happened on Sunday. Did you meet that evening, to analyse every statement as he reported it to the lot of you?" Feuilly asked bitterly. "Were you waiting for me on Monday to hear my side so you could compare notes?"

"He told us what happened, and he is embarrassed and quite sorry for it. It's my fault, really. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed you were interested."

"So you turn it around to my fault that your friends are offensive? You're the one who has been asking personal questions behind my back, without my permission, and then trying to fix my life. An unemployed painter isn't good enough for you."

"So that's what this really is. You got sacked again?"

"The man's job I borrowed has returned to reclaim it," Feuilly muttered.

"No wonder you're in a bad mood. I would be, too. Sometimes it seems a man can't win for trying."

"Don't change the subject. Mood or no mood, I have every right to be pissed off at you. There are about three people in the world who could have told you just what you were doing, setting me up with M. Combeferre, and you don't know the third, so just what did you tell Pan Wojciech and Panna Zofia?"

"They like to talk about you, and they volunteer a lot. 'He is a good boy, eager, respectful. Any man would be proud to have such a boy for a son. Such intelligence, such talent. Zosia, tell him what you told me. New young man has joined workshop, very talented. She has good eye, my Zosia.'" Bahorel's attempt at Pan Chrzyszczewski's accent was very poor, but Feuilly had to admit the enthusiasm was accurate. "I knew you liked the Salon, but I didn't know until the other night that you had met Combeferre there. How could I? By the way, if you haven't seen your Ruth, it's on the wall in Duret's shop." He gave a low whistle of approval.

"I suppose you've told all your friends about that, too, so they are fully informed of my abject failures."

"Haven't said anything about that. Didn't think it was my place."

"None of this has been your place. I sold a drawing. I sold a couple of drawings, actually – you probably have to ask to see the other one. But that doesn't fit my role as working class exemplar, does it? Getting sacked from correcting wallpaper, that's the level my ambitions are supposed to be. You don't want a failed artist, some boy from the provinces with more talent than training, trying to figure out how to stay afloat in the big city. I could have made that work for Duret, maybe, but he knew too much from Cartoux. You know too much from M. Albert. But you won't tell anyone anything important, because it keeps me from the role you want me to play."

"You didn't say anything about it yourself, so I thought you didn't want me to know. My silence was in good faith, I assure you."

"Why are you pretending to be so damned reasonable? You know perfectly well that you've sold all of us a bill of goods. You're the only one who knew what you were getting us all into, and you've prepared neither me nor your so-called friends. I didn't want to offend M. Combeferre, and I believe he didn't want to offend me, but we didn't exactly have much chance when you don't tell us anything important."

"Would you have come had I told you that my friends were a medical student, a couple of law students, and some would-be writers?"

"There's no place for me in a group that looks like that, and you know it. You shouldn't have pushed it."

"Why not? You know more of the world than any of them do, and your education isn't significantly worse. What good are dead languages, really? Do you understand what our so-called education is? A lot of Latin, a good amount of Greek, some religion, and very little else. Combeferre is an absolute genius, and even he took private courses and sat in a variety of public lectures before he dared enter the medical school. And he had more mathematics than the rest of us. He only reads English fluently because he has studied it privately since he was a child. The _collège_ wasn't going to give him anything of value. We can all compose poetry in Latin – what good is that? Even in our world, it's no good once you've left school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are really all a person needs, and the tragedy of education is that so few people are given the opportunity for those basics. If I wanted to pass you off as something you're not, I could buy you a fine suit, have Combeferre take you around to the salons he can get into, and easily pass you off as an aspiring artist from the provinces. But you didn't tell me you wanted to be an artist, so I didn't tell anyone else when I heard it from Mlle Sophie."

"Or, you could have told them, but you chose not to because they weren't interested in an aspiring artist; they wanted the unemployed worker who taught himself everything he knows."

"Do you want me to tell them?"

"Absolutely not. How much more of a trained dog do I need to appear? His talents include reading Greek history in translation, occasional words in the Polish language, and sketching almost as good as a real man. No, thank you."

"You came out with the Polish on your own," Bahorel reminded him.

"And M. Combeferre always says 'Mister Constable' rather than 'Monsieur'."

"And you always say 'Pan' rather than 'Monsieur' when speaking of our Polish friend. How are the two of you not cut from the same cloth?"

"His is silk."

"And yours is chintz? Yours will wear better."

"Now you're sounding absurd."

"This whole conversation is absurd. That's not an insult. Hear me out. If I've been in the wrong, I'm sorry. I meant for this to be a good thing. I thought, despite some understandable missteps, missteps I think needed to be made on their part, things were going well. If they weren't going well enough on Sunday, why would you have invited Combeferre to meet you here? So what went wrong between Sunday and now? You got sacked? Is that all?"

"I thought better of the entire enterprise."

"Before or after you got sacked?"

"It's not because I got sacked. It's because it's too damned perfect. You have no right to push me into anything perfect because you shouldn't know enough to figure out what is perfect."

"So you're not angry at Combeferre for calling you an Indian."

"Oh, I am, but he might be the only person who could accept having some sense knocked into him. He apologised. I'm angry at you for interrogating Pan Wojciech behind my back and telling everyone you know except me whatever he told you. You had no right to do it at all, and you certainly have no right to use it for my so-called 'benefit' when you can't possibly know what that is. Especially when the thing you withhold from them is the thing that doesn't fit with the idea of the self-educated workingman you're trying to promote. It's a lie. And it's patronising. I don't accept you or anyone as my Prince Massalski. That goes for Pan Wojciech, too. I'm not the family lackey, no matter how much he wants to think I am."

"Good. I don't want to be a Massalski, and I don't think Combeferre wants to be a Massalski. You know the tales of the King Artus, right? We sit at a round table. I insist on it. Combeferre insists on it. The others accept it. We don't need a lackey or a follower; what good would your subordination be to us? We need you, as you are."

"Why?"

"Because you don't want to be subordinate to us, either. I wish we weren't having this argument because it proves I mucked everything up. I'm glad we're having this argument because it proves you respect me enough to tell me I mucked it up. You'll have it out with me – that's good. Because you're right, I was absolutely in the wrong. I thought I was being secure, testing the waters to be absolutely certain you had no police connections. I thought you would have done the same thing, had you known any of my associates. But I was wrong to have done it as I did. I thought you would reciprocate in the same situation, but I gave you no clues to follow to do that yourself. And then I should have told you sooner that I had been having conversations with M. Albert ever since that party of his."

"And you shouldn't have misrepresented me to your friends. Or misrepresented your friends to me."

"I told them nothing but the truth. If they expected something less, that is their fault for not opening their minds earlier. If I told you the whole truth, you would never have come at all. And if you did not like Combeferre, you would not have told him he could find you here."

"I do like M. Combeferre, in spite of myself, but that isn't the point."

"Don't tell me the point is that you are cut from chintz and he is cut from silk. That is neither here nor there and you know it."

"The point is that your friends, other than M. Combeferre, are suffering my presence for your sake, aren't they? The Spaniard, in particular. And if they see anything in me, they must be well-aware of my deficiencies."

"What deficiencies?"

Bahorel, to his credit, looked honestly confused. At least he seemed to understand that Feuilly was no longer talking about the education he had denigrated earlier. "One of the men I worked with in the fan business thought I must have been a fancy boy. You know, the exiled Savoyards in rouge who can do no better for themselves than be paraded through the Place Royale."

"He was probably just shitting you about your hair."

"If it were to my face, I'd have accepted it as all in fun and could have stood up for myself however necessary. But that's a hell of a thing to say of a man behind his back. No one gets on whatever trade it is that still wears their hair long. They battle their way like everyone else and no one implies they are less than men."

"Have I ever implied you were less than a man?" He sounded hurt, and Feuilly was starting to be a bit sorry he had battled his way through an encounter that only a week ago would have raised his admittedly low spirits.

"No, and neither have any of your friends to my face, though perhaps you're all deliberately trying not to. If you leave out what Sophie may well tell you are my improper pretensions to a position I can never achieve, you end up emphasing those traits that are most masculine. The workingman, using his hands, is more masculine than the bourgeois, using his head."

"I can promise you that I haven't done that. I've been talking only about your head. Why didn't you tell me you'd sold a couple of drawings?"

"I didn't want to sound like what I'm not," Feuilly admitted. "He won't take anything further unless I get some lessons in nude figures, so I guess I either try suburban landscapes or I'm out for good. He's right – he was kind enough to pay for my rubbish, but you must have noticed how awkward it is compared to the copies of real paintings he also sells."

"It's better than half of what is on the walls at home, and that's about all I know about art."

"Don't tell M. Combeferre. It's best he think I'm just an amateur. It's the only thing we haven't stepped wrong on yet, and that'll go to hell if he thinks I know more than he does. I know nothing."

"Enough to get paid. Twice?"

Feuilly nodded. "Well, more than that if I admit to the fan design that got us all arrested. But Sophie was the actual miniaturist – I earned most of my wages just colouring in patterns."

"It's damned impressive, but it's yours to tell. I hold to that. Hard luck on the job – wish there was something I could do for you."

"Don't tell anyone I got sacked. They'll think me in position to be bought off by the police."

Bahorel laughed. "I'm surprised you don't think we're setting you up."

"Oh, I did. But the police aren't coordinated enough to send someone as well-prepared as M. Combeferre my way. And he wouldn't have called me an Indian guide if he were a spy. I don't know what I'm doing, but I have to trust you now, don't I?"

"If you think you're too far in, there's nothing to be 'in'. We spend time in cafés and in each other's rooms and talk about things."

"So you're no better than Pan Wojciech?"

"We hope to be better. But we need to decide just what our Golden Liberties are."

"Lots of talk, little action."

"For the time being. Help us cut the discussion short, so we can decide on some action."

"I promise nothing publicly."

"But we're still friends."

Feuilly shook his head, but he laughed. "There's no getting rid of you, is there?"

"Not unless you tell me to go away."

"As long as you buy me drinks, why should I give up the golden goose?"


	52. Chapter 52

It was hard to stay angry at Bahorel. The man was simply too reasonable. And after admitting to Laforêt that the wallpaper job had ended, Feuilly had to admit to himself that he had been angry at his own failure to live up to the image he wanted the students to see. He had deliberately hidden his work for Duret, possibly from shame that it was not better, but more likely from fear that his foray into their territory would be soundly mocked regardless of quality. He knew damned well just what sort of men were scraping together a living with a pen and brush, and genteel poverty was not the poverty he knew best. He knew too much of real poverty to successfully play such a false role.

What sort of men could accept him if they knew the whole truth? He belonged with the wolves. And if these students really did accept him, as they claimed they wanted to, what did it say of them? What sort of game was being played where he would end up the patsy? It was not merely that to take anyone at face value was to render oneself a fool. The trouble was that if these men were in earnest, then they were not just a bunch of rabble-rousing students; they were saints. And that simply could not be.

Yet when he turned away to avoid rolling his eyes at False Czartoryski, pretending to care who came in the door so he would not visibly scoff at yet another telling of the death of the poet Kniaźnin, at which Czartoryski claimed to be present but almost certainly was not, he was surprised to see that Combeferre had come after all. Not only had he come, he had come alone, without Bahorel to introduce him to the exiles. Ergo, he was not here to stare at the exiles, but to accept the invitation Feuilly was still not entirely sorry he had made. Combeferre's very appearance in a dingy café where he was a stranger meant he was willing to exert a certain amount of effort to support his beliefs.

It was best, Feuilly decided, not to permit Combeferre any direct contact with Pan Chrzyszczewski. Any talk about him should happen behind his back, and if it had already been done, then he would prefer the guilty parties not awkwardly pretend it had not. Czartoryski was now reciting something by Kniaźnin: Combeferre had impeccable timing. It was easy for Feuilly to slip away as the Poles listened to their great deceased poet.

"You came."

"I hope I have not taken you from your friends."

Feuilly laughed. "They're on to poetry I can't understand a damned word of – something that beautifully expresses the Polish soul, I'm sure, from how they all listen – but it's all hinged on stories I'm starting to think are lies. The one reciting is nicknamed for a man I'm not sure was ever actually his master. My absence from the company will not be noted until he's done, and even then, no one will care." He paused, and when Combeferre did not immediately fill the gap, he, to his immediate shame, asked, "Why are you here?"

"I wish to apologise for the last time we met. You were entirely in the right. I had no cause to imply that you were somehow foreign, or a savage, or such a rarity that no one should ever believe you exist. I was profoundly wrong, and you were entirely right to take offense at what was offensive. I am so sorry."

Feuilly scrutinised the student's face. He looked entirely sincere. "You came here to apologise. You already apologised."

"Not completely. With more thought, I realised just where I had gone wrong. I am sorry to have offended you, as I admitted before. But I mean I was entirely wrong. The Indian guide is so often pushed outside his own tribe, or is a man without a tribe, and I did not mean to imply you were such a man or suggest that you deserved such a fate."

"The real issue is the Indian guide is never accepted by the people for whom he gives up everything. He tells everything and converts and puts on clothes, and he's still a savage no matter how much language he learns or how thoroughly he adopts all the ways we would teach him." The metaphor had hit entirely too close to the truth for Feuilly's comfort. "I don't want to be your Indian guide."

"You wish to be one of us. Of course. That is as it should be."

"Is it?" Feuilly asked skeptically.

"We sit at a round table."

"So M. Bahorel said."

"An equal place for all. You have every right to be one of us."

"Our local friend is in attendance," Feuilly warned him. Too much talk of joining the Knights of the Round Table would quickly become suspicious.

"If you accept that I am undoubtedly fated to offend you again in ways I almost certainly cannot predict, would you consider walking up the hill of Montmartre with me on Sunday? I know it is your only real day of leisure."

"Only if you do something for me."

"Anything." How could anyone look so open when so challenged?

"Keep it to yourself. I don't need my every word reported breathlessly back to your friends."

"I understand."

"Sunday is the coronation."

"Yes. Does that bother you?"

"May I suspect it fitting?"

Combeferre smiled. "Shall we meet – oh, where shall we meet? Near the Hermitage?"

"Why not? At the same time? Until Sunday, then, monsieur."

Once Combeferre had gone, Pan Chrzyszczewski came over to him. "Who was your friend?"

"Oh, just someone I've met at other cafés," Feuilly lied. If Pan Chrzyszczewski did not recognise Combeferre, then Combeferre had never gone behind his back to the Poles. He was behaving in an inappropriately innocent fashion, to Feuilly's mind, but that very innocence was soothing. The student might know quite a lot more facts, but Feuilly was certain he was the real expert about the world.

Sunday dawned clear. Feuilly lay awake, debating whether he should go to mass or stay away. One should always go to mass, he told himself, but it would assuredly include dedications to a king he rather hoped God did not approve of. The cannonade announcing the exact time of the coronation – assuming the schedule had been promptly followed in Rheims – woke Laforêt in a panic.

"Christ, what's going on?"

"Long live the king," Feuilly replied sardonically. "If we were taking advantage of the king's absence to revolt against him, I wouldn't be here."

"A hell of a time to wake the city on a Sunday," he complained, settling back down in bed.

"It is every Frenchman's patriotic duty today to be woken by gunfire. And there go the churchbells."

"Fuck the king. Just let me sleep, you royal bastard!" Laforêt had been using every bit of daylight in the past two weeks to finish his trinket boxes. He had delivered the final batch the night before, well after dark.

It was not a day for mass, Feuilly decided. The cannon fire and bells finally settled, but now he was even more firmly awake. "I'm going out," he announced.

"Don't get yourself arrested," Laforêt mumbled, rolling over to go back to sleep despite the sun streaming in their still-uncurtained windows.

The morning turned out to be cool, a perfect morning for strolling through parks or walking out into the countryside. Feuilly momentarily wished he had made his appointment with Combeferre for an earlier hour, as tramping up the hill of Montmartre would be far preferable in morning chill than in afternoon heat. But then, had not Combeferre said he had hospital rounds every morning in any case? He perhaps could not get away so early.

Feuilly's sketchbook called to him more than did idle wandering. A quick apology to Laforêt for waking him again, and he was back on the street, heading quickly north. The slaughterhouses were silent, with only a lingering scent of blood and decay. As he passed the Hermitage, he considered leaving a note for Combeferre, so he might call the student up to him and climb the hill only once. But with whom would he leave it so early in the day? The gardeners were all probably at work on their plots up the hill, and no caretaker for the great dance hall was in sight. In any case, he had no idea how "Combeferre" might be spelled, and he had no wish to guess wrong and be thought ignorant. Any labour was preferable to that embarrassment.

Even on a clear morning, the great city was obscured by its own exhalations. The cooking fires and the breath of hundreds of thousands of people lingered, the day too calm for winds to push the haze away. As it should be, Feuilly thought, as he turned to a new page in his book. Paris cannot be seen in sharp relief from below, so why should one ever have that view from above?

He placed the dome of Sainte-Geneviève at the centre of his composition. The houses, dwarfed by the church towers, crowded both banks so closely the Seine could not be seen. The piled mass of humanity obscured the river and the gardens, nature banished outside the city walls. For once, his talent kept pace with his desires, hôtels and churches, the slums of Saint-Denis and the roofs of the Faubourg Saint-Germain all flowing from his fingers. It wasn't a real landscape, not the sort of thing M. Constable or his admirers would ever want to see for there was nothing picturesque about it, but it had more of M. Constable's reality than any beautiful image isolated from the public gardens. Paris was laid out with about as much precision as the trees around M. Constable's little house, after all, while the gardens were as orderly as the tiny stage-set landscapes M. Constable had eclipsed. England must be a beautiful country, Feuilly mused. The area around Paris was not beautiful at all.

The sun was high when he decided he had had enough. If only Duret would want a drawing of Paris in its ordinary dress rather than the splendour of the coronation procession he would probably prefer instead, Feuilly could call it a truly productive morning.

Combeferre was again reading, this time leaning against a tree shading the boulevard de Clichy. He greeted Feuilly with a gentle smile and slipped the book into his pocket without explaining his reading material. "Shall we go up?"

"Were you at the hospital already or did you awake to the sounds of invasion this morning?"

"I daresay the sound of cannon is less celebratory than shocking to a certain number of the population. I was already at the hospital, at least. Were you in Paris for the occupations?" Combeferre asked with what appeared genuine rather than merely polite curiosity.

"I've spent my whole life here, and I remember the Cossacks too damned well. But I didn't panic over a cannon salute. Back in '14, I was prowling the barrières, trying to figure out how much closer the fighting could get in the hopes I might see something. All we got were Russians marching in the next day."

"You couldn't have been more than a child."

"Nine years old, more or less. If I'd been older, I'd have been less stupid. I suppose you were being kept safe in Marseille."

"As soon as the call went out for every man eligible for conscription, my father decided that all was lost and he would rather be on the scene in Marseille than in Paris. We had just made it home when word came that the Austrians had crossed the Rhine. And we stayed put for the full Hundred Days, too, keeping our heads down. I don't know if I missed a grand spectacle or if I am glad I never saw our capital occupied. Marseille was different. I was encouraged to practice my English with the men of the blockading squadron my father invited to dine with us after the peace."

"Your father dined with the invaders?"

"Do you remember the White Terror?" Feuilly shook his head. "The returning émigrés did their best to murder, burn out, or torture the men who had supported the Empire. It was particularly bad in the Midi. The royalists did not touch us because my father dined with the invaders. I don't know what takes more courage: to resist because it is right, or to bow in order to save your wife and child. We are the same age, you and I. Sometimes I think my father a coward, and yet I remember the stories. We were too young to understand just what the White Terror might have meant. And was that empire really worth martyring oneself for?"

They climbed in silence for a while. Combeferre's expression had turned melancholy when discussing his father's treason, and Feuilly was unsure how to respond. Or was it treason when the restoration of the rightful king depended on foreign armies? The elder Combeferre had asserted allegiance to the king, if the royalists accepted him, rather than allegiance directly to the English. The fall of the Empire must have been complicated for all the adults; it was easier to have stories about Cossacks salting their brandy and parading on the Champ de Mars than to consider allegiances that could have meant life or death.

The real question was what Combeferre thought was worth martyring oneself for, but that was hardly the phrasing Feuilly wanted to use after such gloomy confessions about the young man's family. The blade of a windmill suddenly loomed over them as they came around a bend in the path. "What do you think the future should look like?" Feuilly finally asked.

"My future?"

"Any future."

"What is my utopia, you mean?"

"No, because I know what that means. There are castles in Spain, and there are castles in the air. Utopias are the latter. Spain, in contrast, actually exists."

"You are right in that. Model communities are not to my taste, either."

"Well, then?" Feuilly pressed. "What do you want?"

"It is very simple, and that is what makes it so difficult. I think each man, woman, and child should have a roof over his head and bread to eat. And yet that is, in many ways, the most difficult thing to accomplish. No one wants to take bread from the government, yet it must be the government and not the church, for there are poor Protestants and poor Jews who must not be kept from the basic needs of life. So, if there is to be food and shelter, there must be work, so that the food and shelter are earned. How is work to be created? Some will distribute the food, so that will keep a few families, perhaps one in every village and a few more in the towns. A few more will purchase and maintain the government stockpiles. But I think food and shelter are not enough, for each man and woman should have control over his or her own life, and for that, there must be education. We must have education before suffrage can mean anything. Here, too, we can provide a few more people with a living, a schoolhouse built beside every church or temple with a schoolmaster or mistress paid by the state. All children shall be permitted to enter, without paying any fee, and the brightest regardless of his family's ability to pay should be sent to the _collèges_. But how are we to pay for it all? Utopias are not cheap. We must increase the tax base. But how? If we add more tariffs, this will make it very expensive when we must purchase grain abroad for our stockpiles, and we will be soundly punished by our trading partners for our insolence, just as we were during the wars. A higher tariff will lose us our foreign customers, and we have not market enough in France for the wallpapers, the furniture, the glass, the silks – so much of what we produce as a nation is bought by the rich of all of Europe and America. The taxes collected at the _octroi_ cannot be increased without increasing misery. So how do we raise revenue?

"So you see, I am very much at the beginning. I want such very simple things, yet they require that society entirely reorder itself in ways I cannot yet discern."

Castles in the air, Feuilly thought. He would have given anything to have been part of an education reform such as Combeferre described – he'd be equal to that perfect model right now. "You might as well start with the model community."

"But I cannot," Combeferre argued with sudden force. "For the model community self-selects. The members wish to live as perfectly as possible. It is not a microcosm of the world, where there are poor men, invalid women, lazy children who must be accommodated by their better-placed or more industrious fellows. I am not a god who can create a better race of men. I wish only to give better opportunity and true charity to every member of our current race. Even, or perhaps especially, to those who have been so left behind in society as it is."

"I don't need your pity."

"I have none for you, for you have done more than most people believe possible, and I hope you will one day be rewarded as your merits deserve. It is not the employee's fault when the businessman's license is revoked, but I daresay it makes other employers wary of picking up those who were thrown into the street. My pity is for the children who are never pointed in the direction, not of virtue, but of honest subsistence."

"There's a difference?" Feuilly asked. Virtue and labour were the same thing according to the church, the charities, even his own sense of right.

"Is there not? I am not a religious man, looking at the state of anyone's soul. What do I care how any deity will judge a man, be he Catholic, Protestant, or Jew? The greatest fortunes in this country have been compounded legally, but with little labour, and often with the acquiescence or the interest of the Church. But that cannot be the future. We should all work at something, to the best of our ability, and that, the labour of the parish priest rather than the so-called virtue of the bishop, must be our goal. And if a boy steals an apple to sate his hunger, the effort to get that apple was as honest as any labour he might perform."

"Theory is grand when you've never been robbed."

"Perhaps. But if I were to be robbed, it would almost certainly be for large sums of money, not for a couple of francs to live another day. You see how I consider the difference."

And you'd find me on the wrong side of it no matter how carefully you try to draw your line, thought Feuilly. "What of your friends?" he asked. "Are they in agreement with your categorisation of theft as honest labour?"

"Not all theft," Combeferre corrected. "A starving person from a market stall or a garden. Entering a house or business by force and appropriating property for a price cannot be categorised as such."

"What about shaving the barbers?"

"Pardon?"

Feuilly did not bother to hold back a laugh. "Shaving the barbers. Watch the actual starving children sometime. You steal a bar of soap from one and sell it to another in the suburbs for a sou. It's a cake of soap; they always have more on hand. If you do it right, you break no windows, destroy no property, and come out with the ability to pay the baker for your single black roll. I'm not saying it's honest work, but it seems a little better than just stealing the bread. It doesn't bankrupt the barber, and it's rather akin to being paid a wage. Perform a task, get paid, decide yourself if you should buy bread or a bed for the night. No one except the chimneysweeps will pay an honest wage to a child of eight or nine, and even then, they only take Savoyards."

"If only we could get such children into schools where we could house and feed them whilst they are taught a trade . . ."

"They used to ship the street children off to be drowned by the Navy, or so the stories say."

"That is an inappropriate way to staff a professional navy."

"That's why I think the kiddies were stuffed in sacks and drowned like so many excess puppies."

"That is disgusting. And highly unlikely. One hears awful rumours about what happens to abandoned infants sent out for nursing, but one cannot fill sacks of felonious orphans so easily."

"Lack of food weakens them pretty easily. It weakens all of us pretty easily." Perhaps climbing the butte twice in one day had been a mistake, Feuilly thought. He was breathing much harder than he had been the first time. They were nearly at the top, he reminded himself. "But to come back to the point: how much of these castles in the air do your friends agree with?"

"All. We want a nation where every man can determine his own life. Where he may elect his government and stand for the assembly if he wishes, where he can be educated and educate his children in turn, where he may participate in the life of the nation as a whole and not just the daily struggle for basic survival. Every one of us believes it necessary, and every one of us will do anything and everything we must in order to bring such a nation about."

They had reached the summit at last. Feuilly collapsed nearly on the same spot he had occupied that morning. "_Z__ł__ota Wolno__ść_. _Z__ł__ota_ – golden. _Wolno__ść_ – liberty. It's what one might call the Polish Charter, the agreement between the nobility and king that limits the king's power and asserts the rights of the nobles. Five main parts. One, free election of the king. Two, a parliament held every two years whether the king wants it or no. Three, _liberum veto_: the right of any member of that parliament to stop a measure with a single vote of 'no'. Four, the right to form political organizations. Five, _rokosz_: the right of legal rebellion against a king that violates any other freedom. Pan Wojciech wants the restoration of these rights, his historical rights. The liberals want to expand some of these rights beyond just the nobility. The _liberum veto_ killed Poland; just give me other four here in my own country, applied to more than just the nobility. All four," he emphasised.

"_Rokosz_," Combeferre mused.

"Isn't that where we are? The sacrilege law, the indemnity to emigrés, the indemnity from Saint-Domingue. How much more do we let happen?"

"Let us concede that in this formulation, 'king' is a non-hereditary head of state."

"That should be obvious from the fact he's elected. In Poland, they'd offer it round to kings or princes of other countries. It never passed automatically to anyone, interregnums could last years, and Poles were rarely chosen because they might inflict too much control, it being their own country. The whole point of election is that the head is an outsider, not a locally powerful man."

"Bernadotte in Sweden."

"Only if at his death, the Swedes then choose someone from Germany. Or England. Or anyone but the crown prince or another Frenchman."

"But look where Poland ended up."

"The _liberum veto _enabled that crime. Made it too hard to organize the country against the predations of the surrounding empires. They did finally choose a Polish king in the end, a man who did everything he could for the country he eventually lost. We should have our own. But an outsider, yes, someone who is not a part of this monarchy or the Empire before it. Someone new."

"Like Washington in America?"

"Perhaps."

"I think we are in agreement, then."

Feuilly shook his head. "We're in agreement for today. And I do accept your apology from before. But this isn't you and me and Bahorel. I need time."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"No one should blithely march into martyrdom, no matter the cause."

Feuilly looked back out over the teeming city. "How many people in Paris?"

"657,000 in the 1821 census."

He gave a low whistle. Well over half a million people there below him, worlds upon worlds. "It's a universe of its own."

"It is," Combeferre agreed.

"No wonder the utopians start small."

It took a moment, but Combeferre caught his meaning and laughed. Feuilly thought he rather liked the student more in these moments when the façade slipped and his youth came to the fore. Perhaps Bahorel was right that they were cut from the same cloth – Combeferre did so often seem prematurely grown, as if the responsibilities of a kingdom had prevented a natural childhood, and Feuilly had always found it hard to argue against Mireille when she had insisted he was born old. But that was too much to hope for, really, a castle in the air. They would run aground again soon enough on harsh reality.


	53. Chapter 53

The final preparations for the King's entry to Paris brought plenty of men to the place de Grève in search of day labour, but only men for the road crews were selected. Laforêt ended up getting some work updating the shops along the planned cortège route in this final week, while Feuilly spent a couple of days with Manoury refreshing their façades. But neither earned much money, nor did any future work seem forthcoming once the king was firmly installed.

The king was to return to Paris on Monday, when hardly anyone worked anyway, and an additional day of leisure was ordered for the following day. All workshops were to be closed, and even the markets were to have restricted hours. The great public festival was not to take place until Wednesday, to Feuilly and Laforêt's chagrin.

"We'll be out of work all week," Laforêt predicted in astonishment as Feuilly read the _Journal des Débats_' schedule of events aloud.

"At least you can take Ada to the theatre on Tuesday."

"We'll see. You going to check out the cortège?"

Feuilly shrugged. He was admittedly curious, but he had no desire to be confused with a supporter of the regime. "I prefer the bread and circuses to the parade of captives, myself." Though he immediately looked around to see if anyone had overheard him. The entire city had felt as though it were crawling with spies all week.

Still, he found he could not sleep, and early Monday morning, he went out into the streets. "Try not to get yourself arrested," Laforêt told him as he left.

The sun was barely up, and the streets were still empty except for the market carts. The road closures were not to begin until after noon. Feuilly headed for the river, curious as to what preparations would be in train for the place Notre-Dame, as the king was to attend a _Te Deum_ to cap off his sacred procession. Supplies to barricade in the spectators were carefully piled in a couple of places, but it was still too early for any work. Perhaps the students had done something in the Latin Quarter overnight, he thought, and turned to cross the river.

A movement of the overcast sky, perhaps, caught his eye, or perhaps a sound had carried across the water. He had no real reason to look downstream, but there, scrawled on the final arch of the pont Saint-Michel, was a bright white scrawl. The students had been out the night before, it seemed, for the grammar and spelling were both correct. Above the Morgue, in a frighteningly apt placement, had been chalked, "_En t'ait fait sacré, tu sera massacré_" [In having yourself consecrated, you will be massacred]. Two policemen stood on the bridge above the graffiti, arguing animatedly, their voices too low for Feuilly to hear. Whoever had so cleverly defaced the bridge had been a great climber, for neither a ladder from the quai nor a tall man leaning over the parapet could have so perfectly centered that statement. And the effort had to have been done overnight, in near-complete darkness and silence, to avoid notice from the Morgue or the Prefecture of Police. Feuilly hurried across the bridge, hiding a smile until he was well-past the view of the two policemen who must have been tasked with obliterating the message by some means they had yet to devise. A gamin on a rope might be their best chance, Feuilly thought.

The students had mostly behaved themselves at home, it seemed, but he wished he could congratulate the men who had played such a successful joke, supposing they were not so stupid as to be signaling an actual assassination plot. But no, anyone who went to the effort to hang over the side of a bridge was not going to destroy all the work put into another plot. Could it have been any of Bahorel's friends? Certainly not Combeferre. It was impossible to picture Combeferre hanging over the side of a bridge. But Feuilly had been avoiding the others, and he could picture Bahorel providing the tension on the rope, possibly dangling one of the small ones over the edge. He would have to remember to ask, if such things became safe to ask before he entirely forgot the excellent pun.

A queue had begun to form behind Saint-Sulpice at the mairie, waiting for the promised distribution of food, wine, and money to those registered for public assistance. All were women, many clutching their children to them. The rest were probably the mothers of the boys who had begun to raise a clamour in the otherwise silent street. The old games of role playing had never been abandoned; here, boys were about to come to blows over who would get to be the king in their mock procession. Feuilly had never had the doubtful honour of playing the emperor at their age; he had volunteered to be one of the marshals every time. It was not that he preferred being a follower; he simply did not want to be a leader. He looked out for his own skin, and anyone strong enough to frequently lead the games would prove to have other responsibilities laid on him at some point – leadership in a plot, boys horning in on his territory hoping that having been an acolyte in fun might translate into sharing a sleeping place, that sort of thing. Life was hard enough looking out for one; he did not need followers.

He settled down with a bowl of coffee at a café catering to the market vendors nearby. Everything would be closed in Paris within the next few hours, shuttered at the dictates of a man no one particularly cared to follow. Louis had never had a grand coronation. He had respected that the world had changed, that he had to work with those in his country who did not wish to see him return. And his circumspection had seemed to work. Charles was making it damned difficult to forget that he was taking over the world that had moved on without him, dragging everyone back. The only way to avoid the disgusting spectacle was to walk out into the country southwest of the city, in the opposite direction of the road to Rheims.

It seemed like a plan as far as the Observatory, but curiosity about the crowds, and knowing none of the papers would dare convey anything but enthusiasm in their Wednesday editions, drew him back. He set aside the momentary temptation to spy on Combeferre – not knowing how long "rounds" might take, he elected to see the entry at la Villette over watching the abasement at the cathedral.

He found a spot on the boulevard Saint-Martin and decided to go no further. There was no great crowd preventing him from going further, but he had no taste for the toadying speeches to be given at the barrière itself. Windows had begun to open and a few white banners flew, likely from rooms rented for the occasion, he thought, as the unfashionable women at the undecorated windows called to their neighbours and gave a general appearance of belonging to the neighbourhood. The merchants were decorating their shopfronts with what appeared the entire contents of their shops, eagerly appropriating the day for advertising their own businesses rather than celebrating the monarchy.

"How's business?" he asked a little girl selling barley sugar from a deep box balanced around her neck.

"Lousy," she pouted. Her mother – or employer, it was hard to tell – was dragging a tell-tale coffee barrel several paces behind. He bought a bowl from her and chatted briefly about how few people had come so far north. "We'll be back for the plays," she told him. "Who can say no to a free play? They'll have to spend a little then, won't they?"

Enough people gathered by the time the carriage traffic ended that there would be something for the king to see. The street was not crowded, no one had to jostle for a view, but it was fully lined on each side with plenty of women and a few men at the windows. Feuilly stepped back so a working class family with small children could have the better view. He did not mind watching over the top of the mother's head. She was barely Lydie's height, though her three children had left her thick in the stomach. One of the children had a handkerchief tied to a stick as a white banner; a white flag of surrender it seemed without the telltale fleur-de-lys.

Mounted soldiers cleared the road. Gendarmes took up positions along the route, ready to control the crowd. Then the rest of the gendarmerie, in full dress uniform, began to march down the boulevard, followed by various squadrons of the National Guard, on horse and on foot. These were not cheered but were viewed with boredom. Soldiers marching into Paris had been seen so often that they were a spectacle only to the children too young to remember Louis' return to Paris ten years before. The boy in front of Feuilly waved his white flag at first, then grew restless as the National Guard seemed never to end. At last, the carriages of the Duc d'Angoulême and the princesses came in much too quick succession, hailed with cheers that paled as the contents betrayed the coats of arms: only old men, advisers and officials, were seated inside. And then the interminable line of soldiers recommenced.

"It's not much of a pageant, is it?" Feuilly asked the father.

"I expected something a little more like Carnival. Now that would have been a thing, wouldn't it? Not that I'm complaining for myself, mind you. But the kids need something more than this."

"Last time I saw so many soldiers, we'd lost a war. Again."

"At least my kids will have better memories than that."

"It'll have to improve once the royal coach actually goes by, won't it?"

Carnival would have been a better model, Feuilly agreed. There were banquets to be given for the surviving workers corporations, but none of them participated in the cortège. Why was this spectacle padded out with yet more military, when this succession had taken place naturally rather than by conquest? It might as well have been another conqueror taking possession of Paris. A few ranks of workers with traditional signs of their occupations would break up the uniforms, would represent the rest of the country. A few wagons presenting events from the king's life would at least be more interesting than endless rows of armed men.

The elaborate coronation coach finally appeared, the king and his family waving to the cheering multitudes in their minds. The gathered people cheered then, loud and sustained, but to Feuilly's ear, it was not full-throated. He doubted it could be heard even two streets away, for the assembled people were hardly the choking crowd the king must have expected. He added his voice for the benefit of the gendarmes guarding the parade route, not for the royal family. After more soldiers passed, dressed in the magnificent uniforms of the Royal Guard, the procession was finally over.

"You'll remember this all your lives, won't you?" Feuilly asked the children.

"Maybe."

He laughed. "Honest kid. You're raising them well, I see." He bid good day to the family and split off down a side street to slip home.

Laforêt greeted him from outside Ada's doorway. "See anything?"

"Soldiers, soldiers, and more soldiers. I could be forgiven for having missed the king, in among so damned many soldiers."

Ada poked her head out. "You really did see the king?" she asked skeptically.

"The king, the duchess, the whole royal family. You should have gone. It wasn't exactly crowded."

"Some of us are lucky enough to have work."

"You won't be working tomorrow, though," Laforêt pleaded.

"Of course not, silly. I'm not missing the festival. Just the parade. Doesn't sound like I missed much."

"Come to the theatre with us," Laforêt offered.

"Only if he can find a girl."

"And if I can?"

"Then I have to see it for myself," she laughed sharply.

"Where are you planning on going?"

Laforêt looked to Ada for confirmation. "The Variétés or the Gymnase."

"Not the Variétés. I've already been there. The Gymnase or maybe the Ambigu. Depends on the queues."

"The queues will be insane."

She shrugged. "It's the only way Thierry is ever taking me to the theatre. If we get there at 8, I can't imagine we won't get in. Do come with us. I'm dying to see the sort of girl you'll be able pick up."

Feuilly refrained from rolling his eyes. "I'm off to the Robillard. See you there if you like."

Where was he going to find a suitable girl on such short notice? Sophie was entirely out: he could not bring her when chaperoned by her father. He needed a girl. If desperate, he could always ask Viv if she'd be willing to sneak out, but she was not at all the sort of girl who could ever be brought anywhere near Ada. She was somewhere between a receiver of stolen goods and a whore, even if she was attractive in her own way and really quite a sweet girl if anyone would have given her the time of day. But he had a reputation to build, one that could never have any place for a ruined woman like Viv.

"Where's today's _Constitutionnel_?" he asked the café owner after poking at all the tables. "Or yesterday's, for that matter?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, it's hardly appropriate for the day's festivities."

"They were allowed to print it, so I'd think I'd be allowed to read it," Feuilly snapped. "I hadn't even finished with yesterday's!" The Sunday edition had had a long editorial on the meaning of the coronation which he had set aside for later.

"You may not want to play it safe, but I do."

"You haven't dropped the subscription, have you?"

"I won't say."

Feuilly took that as a "no". It was safer to drop the subscription than to keep it. "A glass of wine and whatever you can find for me to read."

The wine was sour and the newspaper proved to be the latest issue of _L'Ami du religion et du Roi_. "Are you kidding me?"

"It's what I've got today."

Feuilly rolled his eyes at the proprietor and settled in to anger himself in lieu of any other entertainment. At least this issue began with an article "On the Multiplication of Evil Books", so some loathing was guaranteed. Not that he had been permitted to indulge in the dark fantasies true acquaintance with these complete editions of Voltaire and Rousseau must surely bring about, but he could be angry that the rate of multiplication had not yet been high enough to include him in the growing number of readers.

He was unfamiliar with half the books they deemed evil. Of course the Friend of Religion and the King could hardly approve of a book titled "Common Sense", but what in particular made it evil? It was not a very interesting article without knowing at least something about everything they cited. The whole article might be laughable, but he was too ignorant to laugh at it properly. He was annoyed enough to toss the paper aside.

Where was he going to find a girl? Could he really just flirt his way through the illuminations and fireworks that evening, try on the idea of the would-be artist from the provinces again, and introduce Ada and Laforêt as his neighbours? But then he would have to trust that Ada would not say anything that would undermine what was really a confidence trick. And he would feel rather sorry to have played a trick on a stranger, particularly when it was likely to blow up in his face in front of a very long queue of theatregoers or the entire population of the gods. But how was an unemployed, scrawny, slightly effeminate boy like himself, who only ever attracted motherly prostitutes, going to find a girl he could present to Ada? There were Lydie's mates, but they would have nothing to do with him. It was much too late to press Sophie about any of the girls she worked with.

But there was Mme Mirès. She had said not to visit her again, but she had seemed sorry to say it. She was nothing like Sophie, for Sophie would never have come with him unchaperoned in the first place. Ada had already met her, so it would hardly be a surprise, but it would prove that some woman found him worthy enough to see again. Yet the greatest consideration had to be whether he would offend, rather than pleasantly surprise, Mme Mirès by seeking her out and making such an invitation.

It was worth a chance, he decided abruptly. He would do it now, and if necessary, go to the illuminations that night seeking to repair his broken pride. "When I come back, I hope you'll have something better than this rubbish," he told Robillard, brandishing the _Ami_.

"Next week, give or take."

"I hold you to it."

"Says the man who owes me three francs," he muttered just loud enough for Feuilly to hear as the door closed behind him.

That in itself was a strong argument against the whole project, Feuilly realised, his heart sinking. What was he really offering her? Six hours in a queue for a free play, then crammed in with possibly hundreds more than usual, unable to treat her to anything more than a piece of barley sugar. And the moment she met Laforêt, any sense she might have still had about his place in the world would be utterly destroyed. Unless he was such a poor confidence man that she had never really believed him anyway. She had been surprised when he paid her, after all. But if she had gone along with an obvious lie, then she was less virtuous than he had thought her, for she had gone with him to his flat, and he could not bring himself to believe so ill of her. She was not the ordinary Jewess. So why would she come along with him again, publicly, at all?

But then, she had liked him, he thought, and she had put up an appropriate fuss, and he had been very glad when she had finally taken his hand, even if it was when speaking to the gendarme on night duty at the prefecture. He had done nothing illegal in her presence – it was not illegal to not admit to a girl that you had no money in your family when admitting you had no money in your pockets. She came from a poor family, too, if she was in such straits, and her late husband could not have been one of the rich Jews, either, so perhaps his own lack of rank would not be so shameful to her. She was poor but honest enough in keeping the door open, even if she had agreed that the gossips might as well talk about something real rather than invented. Could she condemn him for a position so close to her own?

The concierge who opened to him was a middle aged man of sagging belly and faded blond hair. The old woman who had opened to him in January was gone, either retired to the country with her meagre share of the take or removed after her corruption became obvious. "Is Mme Mirès in?" Feuilly asked.

"Hell if I know. But I bet you know the way," he leered.

If he keeps that up, he won't have an honest female lodger left, Feuilly thought as he climbed the stairs. Nothing else about the house had changed since winter, but the place now felt tawdry rather than merely poor.

"Monsieur!" she greeted him in surprise. He had not intended to shock her, and he was suddenly sorry he had come. She looked more tired than he had remembered.

"Madame." He made a quick half bow. "I know you said not to come again, but – are you well? Have you been well?"

"Yes, thank you." She peered out the door for a moment, rapidly taking in the whole hall. "Come in. Keep your voice down."

"I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."

"No!" she hastened to stop him from going. "I ought not be seen with you, but I am glad to see you. Paris is not treating you well."

"Paris is fueled by luck, and someday the wheel of fortune will turn again in my favour. I was much lower when I met you, though I may not have looked it. So I cannot complain. I came to ask – I mean, I was curious if -" Why was it suddenly so hard to ask a simple question? "Are you going to see any of the illuminations tonight?"

"No. I cannot. Perhaps if my husband's family are interested, we might take a look another night."

"Are they taking you to the theatre tomorrow?"

"Of course not. We must work."

"We've all been ordered not to work."

"The markets and shops will not be closed."

"The plays don't start until two."

"My mother-in-law also has a poor opinion of playacting, so I shall miss them all the same," she finally admitted ruefully.

"Come with me, then."

"You know I cannot, monsieur."

"I haven't come to court you or ruin your reputation. I just thought you might like to see a play. Do you remember my neighbour, Mlle Chollet? It's her party. I'll be a perfect gentleman, just like before, and you could sit between us, and no one would have a chance to trouble you."

"I really ought not." But the hesitation in her voice proclaimed "yes" more loudly than her lips probably could.

"If your husband were alive, would he take you?"

"Of course." She gave the broadest smile he had ever seen from her, and his heart rose at the sight. "We went twice to the Vaudeville, and I thought it the most wonderful thing in the world."

"Would he want you to miss it, then?"

"Albert is neither here nor there. Had he lived, I might finally have had children, and with a couple of babies, I would still have to miss it."

"Women always bring the babies. You will come, won't you?"

"Can we even get in?"

"Ada thinks if we queue at eight, we won't have a problem."

"Six hours!"

"It's not much of an offer, is it?"

"If anyone finds out, they won't think you trying to woo me."

"Would you rather go to the fêtes on Wednesday?"

"No, that I cannot do," she said firmly. "It would be far too much like courtship, I think, and I must not be seen to think of any such thing with a Christian. I ought not go tomorrow. But to see a play again!"

"I'll see you there and back. You wouldn't be in a bit of danger."

"You mustn't. The danger is from women's eyes and tongues, not men's hands. That gruesome man downstairs will make enough of this visit as it is that it will surely get around from the first person who overhears. Let me think. I do want to go, though I know I ought not." After a moment, her face screwed in thought, she finally decided, "I'll do my marketing early. Meet me behind the synagogue in the rue St-Avoie at half past seven. Where are we going?"

"Maybe the Ambigu, but probably the Gymnase. Ada had better decide tonight so we don't track her across half of Paris." He grinned. "I'm so happy you'll come."

"You are not courting me," she warned.

"On my honour before God," he swore solemnly. "I hold your reputation secondary only to your happiness, and I do not think you a light woman who could be happy despite a ruined name."

She bid him good day, checking again that the hall was empty before permitting him to go.

"So you're the one," the concierge sneered as Feuilly tried to leave the house unobserved.

"I don't know what you mean," he answered evenly.

"Thought she'd have better taste if you ain't got money. But you never can tell with Jewesses, can you?"

"Does the landlord pay you to insult your tenants' guests?" Feuilly asked coldly. "I won't hear another word." He stalked off without even an icy courtesy, telling himself that a bourgeois would never lower himself to false pleasantries with an odious little man who lacked any real authority.

Laforêt was waiting for him at Robillard's. "I thought you said you'd be here."

"I was. Just had to run an errand."

"Anything you want to admit to?"

"Ada."

"You don't have to go scouring Paris for a girl just because she forgot her manners."

"She didn't forget her manners. I've been deemed unworthy of the effort."

"It's really not as bad as you think."

"She doesn't think I'm a fancy boy and want to hold that over me?"

"But you don't have to take her seriously, is all I mean. She doesn't expect you to."

"So when I show up tomorrow with a pretty girl on my arm, does that call her bluff or play right into her little joke?"

"You found someone?" Laforêt asked incredulously.

"Of course I found someone. I know girls," Feuilly lied.

"Mlle Sophie doesn't count because her father will be in tow."

"Which is why I never even considered asking her. It's my Jewess," he admitted.

Laforêt looked unimpressed. "You don't know any girls."

"I know girls, but I won't bring them anywhere near Ada." Laforêt thanked him, but Feuilly brushed it off. "She's a very young widow. She looks exactly like my drawings of her," he tried to protest, though he knew it was futile.

"Will she actually come?"

"She promised."

"She doesn't know about -"

"No," Feuilly cut him off firmly. "And don't breathe a word to her or to Ada about it."

Laforêt raised his hands in mock surrender. "I'm not a snitch. Can I admit to seeing the drawings?"

"You can admit to your entire part in the enterprise. She already knows I was working with you. Ada saw to that. Running away from home to be an artist is expensive, I think I told her. Which is probably true enough. I'm not sure what she believes, to be honest."

"Your girl; your call."


	54. Chapter 54

The next morning, Feuilly went to the market looking for Mme Mirès despite his original agreement to meet her behind the synagogue. He did not like the idea of her loitering somewhere; it seemed far worse for her reputation than if he "happened" to run into her at the market. And anywhere near the synagogue seemed the worst possible place for a Jewess to meet clandestinely with a Christian. The market was quite public, but the talk would have to be worse if it looked like a plot rather than a happenstance. Thus he dared look for her among the stalls of the marché St-Jean in advance of the agreed time. She was with the cheesemonger where he had first spotted her, failing to agree an acceptable price. "Do you need help with that basket, madame?" he asked, scaring her out of her skin.

Yet she did not send him away, her expression softening into a smile when she saw it was merely him. "Do you have four sous? I thought I would buy supplies for us, but I have come up short."

Feuilly rummaged in his pockets, excited to have this chance to play the gallant. His heart sank when she refused the 83 centimes he could produce.

"Only the four, if you please. You must keep something for yourself."

"It should be for the man to pay."

"You are not wooing me, so I'll take nothing more than your share."

"It must be more than four." She accepted seven. "I meant no offense," he pleaded.

"I know." But she would not let him carry the basket or take his arm as they walked through the busy streets. Her presence was the only intimacy she permitted.

"Ada said to meet her at the Gymnase. Unless she doesn't like the look of the queue, then she would go on to the Ambigu. But she's desperate to get into the Gymnase."

Luckily, Ada and Laforêt were at the Gymnase as planned, zealously guarding their place in the queue. "Budge down! I told you we had two friends coming!" she barked at the people next to her behind the wooden barrier. At least she greeted Mme Mirès with a smile. "Hand me the basket and the boys will help you over the rail. I should have known he'd bring you. He doesn't know any other girls." To Feuilly's surprise, this comment was neither directed at him nor cutting in the least. It was a bare statement of fact, delivered with a warmth he had never heard from her. What was she playing at? he wondered. Mme Mirès would not have to know there was anything wrong between them, but he would have preferred that Ada treat him decently in private before she trotted her manners out in public. It would have confused him less.

Laforêt helped steady Mme Mirès as she balanced on the rail, Feuilly helping her swing her legs over the top without putting her petticoats on display. She seemed doubtful about the project until it it proved successful. Feuilly climbed in after her – the theatre rails could be vaulted if there were more space, and they were practically made to be climbed over in any case.

"You didn't meet Thierry before, did you?" Ada asked Mme Mirès. "Thierry Laforêt, Madame – oh dear, I don't think I know your Christian name. Or your husband's Christian name. And you're not even Christian," she had to add in embarrassment. "I'm sorry!"

Feuilly rather enjoyed seeing Ada flustered, even if it was just for a moment before Laforêt stepped in to rescue her. "I've heard your name plenty, Mme Mirès. Nice to meet you properly, instead of just in Feuilly's drawings. I share the room with him."

"Ah, you are the friend."

"The room is so much better than when you saw it," Ada told her, recovering her poise. "They finally have furniture. But they need a woman's influence so badly. Leave it to men: they've been there more than six months and they still have no curtains!"

Feuilly did not particularly like the implication of this turn of the conversation, and from her expression, neither did Mme Mirès. It was his own fault, perhaps, for not having made clear to Laforêt to make it clear to Ada that he had no intention of courting a Jewess. "We have to be up with the sun anyway, so it doesn't matter," Feuilly said, his intended good humour lost in the need to put a stop to the entire line of conversation. "I'm here to escort madame to the theatre, not to ask her to decorate my room. If we wanted curtains, we'd have done something about it by now. If you think we need curtains, why haven't you helped us out?"

"I'm the one who owns a broom. You'd be living in abject filth if it weren't for me."

Feuilly thought her far too satisfied with her role when she had never wielded that broom outside her own door, but he changed the subject rather than argue in the middle of the street. "It looks like we'll definitely get in." There were perhaps twenty people ahead of them, while the queue behind kept growing.

"One of my girlfriends thought she wouldn't come until noon. I don't know if she'll make it. But she has a student who can afford to pay later in the week, if they haven't already finished off his allowance, so I don't feel too sorry for her."

"How large is the theatre?" Mme Mirès asked.

"Over a thousand."

"But it's probably like a first night, where the actors give out most of the tickets to friends and the claque," Feuilly said. "They might get a hundred of us in; maybe they'll even give us the whole gods. But there's not going to be over a thousand of us filling any of these theatres."

"Really? How do you know?" Ada asked.

He suddenly wished he had kept his mouth shut. He was supposed to have run away from home in the provinces to be an artist; how could he admit to having been a supernumerary more than once and seen how tickets were distributed, down to the arguments backstage over the author's share? If he lied and said he knew claqueurs, Ada would never let him hear the end of it. "Common knowledge, I thought," he finally answered.

"Maybe in your circles," she said insinuatingly, at least temporarily back to the Ada he expected. "Well, if it's true, then I was very clever to insist we come so early."

"Thank you for the invitation, but would you not have preferred to be with your friends?" Mme Mirès asked.

"Too many of them are still playing around with students. They're friends for the dance hall."

"She's ashamed of me," Laforêt tried to explain.

"I am not! None of their men have real jobs, either. Half of them aren't actually students, just boys who still get money from their fathers."

"Like M. Feuilly?"

"I get money from no one," he explained quickly, before Ada could exercise her wit.

"In any case, Thierry isn't anything like the men they go with, so it would be embarrassing for him."

"Nicette Longin was halfway to marriage with a turner, if I remember rightly."

"He went back out on his tour of France and quit writing. She took up with a scene changer at the Italian opera a few months ago."

"So that's where she is today. I thought it strange she wasn't already here."

"What did your husband do, if I can ask?"

"He was a tailor," Mme Mirès replied to Ada. "Close work for no money."

"And what is it you do?"

"I used to help him, but now it's plain sewing however I can get it. What of you?"

"Embroidery. You must be so bored in Paris! No husband and no money. It's quite sad, I think – one always thinks of Jews as rich."

"We cannot all be Rothschilds, just as you cannot all be dukes and duchesses."

"The Jews are just like the Greeks, or any other people, really," Feuilly tried to explain. "If they were only rich bankers, they would be a profession, not a people. If Christ says the poor are always with us, then every race must have their poor as well as their rich. And Christ was speaking of the Jews because he was one, right?"

"You read too much," Ada told him. "Plain sewing is so tedious, isn't it? Half my friends are barely keeping themselves on it outside the flower season. Is your employer a Jew? Do they squeeze their fellows like they squeeze us?"

"I wouldn't know. I think employers must be employers, no matter what the religion. My father-in-law's employer does not treat him well, I don't think, and he is also Jewish. I get most work from a German woman I think might be a Protestant."

"I don't think anyone came here today to discuss work," Feuilly told them. Ada pulled Mme Mirès into a discussion of bonnets instead, leaving the men to themselves for the moment. "What is Ada's problem today?" he asked Laforêt.

"I have no idea. She's never been this nice to you."

"I've never seen her be this nice to you, to be frank."

"She's treating your girl like one of her friends, which is what you want, isn't it?"

"She's not my girl, and I don't trust yours an inch, with ample reason, I think you can agree." But the women were chatting in good humour.

By ten, the street was very crowded and the gendarmes were actively directing traffic. The hopeful spectators behind the barrier were pushed closer together in order to keep the boulevard clear for the passing carriages.

Mme Mirès peeked out into the crowd. "Perhaps I should not have come."

"I haven't said anything to offend you, have I?" Ada worried. "I don't know any Jews, so I've probably said so many terrible things without even knowing it."

"No. I haven't talked like this since I was a girl. I had not realised I missed it. But if anyone I knew were to see me . . ."

"You don't really want to be seen on M. Feuilly's arm?"

"It isn't that, precisely. I am expected to marry again, and I must, for I have been so lonely, but I bring nothing but myself to a marriage, so you may imagine that offers have not been forthcoming. And none shall ever come if I am known to parade myself about town in the company of young Christian men. M. Feuilly is a very kind young man, but he is a Christian."

"We've been through this before," Feuilly explained to Ada.

"Then we'll fix that right up," Ada insisted. "You're with me, and the boys are with themselves. You know me from work. All perfectly innocent."

"It is kind of you to be so willing to lie for a stranger, mademoiselle."

"I've met you twice now, so you're not a stranger. If Feuilly's not a stranger, I can't be."

At noon, they broke their fast. Ada had also brought a basket, and they shared around a bottle of watery wine, though Mme Mirès declined to share in the sausage Ada offered. "I must not. It is not permitted to eat of meat and milk in the same meal."

"Jews are odd."

But to Feuilly's relief, Mme Mirès laughed. "Yes, we are. When I first came here, Albert took me to the Vaudeville, and one of the pieces had a stage Jew. I thought, 'This writer knows nothing of my people! No one in Bordeaux speaks like that!' And then I met a few more shopkeepers and understood: the writer knew the worst of my people here after all."

"Is religion really a topic for polite discussion?" Feuilly asked.

"Fine. Is Bordeaux where you come from?" Ada asked Mme Mirès.

"Yes. We were married there. Albert came to Paris first, to find more work, then he sent for me. His parents followed a year later."

"You can't have been here very long, then."

She thought for a moment. "Seven years, now, which must be quite some time."

Ada struggled to swallow her obvious shock; Laforêt did not bother. Feuilly was less surprised, since he had believed Jews married young, and she had now merely confirmed something he had always wondered. "You must have been a child!"

"I married at sixteen. There was no point in waiting longer."

"You must think us terribly light, unmarried at our age." Why Ada should be concerned that a Jewess think her light, Feuilly did not know, but she was certainly taking it as a personal flaw.

"Not at all. Christians must have their own ways of doing things. It is your country, so you have your freedom," she tried to explain. "You may take the time to enjoy it. We do not have that freedom, so we make the best of what we have. A married woman can at least go to the market, can help her husband in his work outside the home. A girl must stay at home for her protection. So I suppose I have my freedom now, for I have not been sent home to my parents or pushed to live with my husband's family."

"That is very, very sad."

She shrugged. "It is what it is. I miss my husband, but it was not the marriage it should have been. We never had children, and children are the point of marriage, are they not? We brought no more of our people into the world, and that is a failure. I should like to try again, while I still might, but it must be hard to take such a risk on a woman who has already failed in her duty of making a home and family."

Feuilly half listened as the women chatted of their homes and families. Ada was from a village in the Cher, not far from where Laforêt had grown up before his family moved to the departmental capital of Bourges. Perhaps that was part of the attraction, that they were countrymen even in the restricted sense peasants would understand, though they both seemed plenty citified to Feuilly. More interesting was that poor Jews seemed to care more for their history than the poor French did, for Mme Mirès was able to explain the flight from Spain under the Inquisition and share some phrases of the Jewish patois she had grown up speaking in Bordeaux. Her French was excellent, he thought, for someone who had not properly used it until migrating to Paris.

A little after one, as the crowd was starting to push everyone up against the doors, the theatre manager stepped outside. "The only available seats are in the amphitheatre!" he cried to the anxious spectators. "Once all places in the amphitheatre are filled, no one else will be permitted in." He moved down the queue, making his announcement over and over.

"Looks like you were right," Laforêt told Feuilly.

"Common knowledge, like I said. Yes, Ada, you were absolutely right to arrive this early," he told her before she could start preening again.

"Three in a row, three in a row!" the manager cried as he came back up the queue to his place inside.

"Everybody take hands," Laforêt ordered. "We don't want to get split up."

"There are four of us," Mme Mirès noted with worry.

"Go between Ada and Feuilly. I'll stand behind Ada. Take hands and it will work."

It was rare that Laforêt had taken charge of anything in Feuilly's experience, but he was never wrong when he did take charge. Feuilly's experience had been generally in the wings themselves, rarely in the gods where one had to pay. Perhaps Laforêt's knowledge was left over from his days as a compagnon. Surely that was the last time he might have had both money and mates with whom to spend it.

At one-thirty, the doors opened, but they were kept back. People from the far end of the queue, it appeared, were being escorted outside the barrier and into the theatre, brandishing tickets to taunt those who had waited all day. Some of the waiting spectators cursed at these actors' friends who dared so publicly take advantage of their free tickets in the pit and boxes. One woman in the queue threw something at a woman being escorted in, hitting her square in the back of the head to cheers from the audience. At least the crowds in the street, who had no chance at all of seeing a play, were able to get a show. "I had not expected it would become so crude," Feuilly apologised to Mme Mirès.

"It is not right that we are passed over like this as we have waited patiently and accepted that we must climb directly to the top. I have been in Paris longer than you; I have seen an angry crowd before. They will calm down when we are allowed in. I am sure of it."

When the first people were finally waved through and the queue started to move, everyone seemed to take the opportunity to push forward. Laforêt was right – hold hands, refuse to be separated, and move as swiftly as possible were the order of the day. Gendarmes were already stationed at the head of each aisle; ushers kept repeating "down front and to the end, down front and to the end", trying to fill every space on the long benches as quickly as possible without the bother of a ticket. Ada's initiative granted them seats in the very first row of the amphitheatre. They were among the gods indeed, so close to the ceiling, yet with a view those behind them could not command. They managed to arrange themselves so that the women sat between the men, Mme Mirès protected by Ada on one side and Feuilly on the other. Ada grabbed Laforêt's hand. "I've never had such good seats. Never! Oh, isn't the house beautiful?"

The benefit to the actors having so many tickets was that the pit was full of its usual inhabitants and women in lovely dresses filled the boxes. It was a poorer audience than usual of an evening, perhaps, but it was an audience that gave a whiff of the typical glamour to the three hundred or so people crammed into the gods.

The doors had barely closed when the theatre manager took to the stage, announcing his best wishes for the king and thanking the king for his benevolence and good will in ordering the performances for the day. One rowdy somewhere behind them booed, but that only put the audience and the gendarmes on alert. One more unfortunate sound, and it was possible they might remove anyone, whether or not he was the boor who did not know how to choose his time and place. It was to be a truncated performance: instead of four dramas, they would perform only three this afternoon. Groans followed, though the manager succeeded in hushing everyone enough that he might announce the bill. "You are privileged to be at our very first performance of a new piece, _Windows for Rent_. Let us be kind to the company who have worked so hard to bring it to the stage this afternoon."

The set began with the well-received _The Secret Door._ Some excellent rhymes pushed the story along, and a bumbling valet produced the requisite gales of laughter. Feuilly laughed as loudly as anyone, and then promptly felt ashamed for finding something he knew must be trash so terribly amusing. What would the students think of him, enjoying a vaudeville several months old, when he ought to have been at the Théâtre française, where some sort of classical work on King David was the piece to be performed in celebration of the coronation?

But the valet was funny. And the girls were whispering to each other about the dress worn by the actress playing the young lover, so the costumes were as impressive as the poetry, which was not terrible. He could have gone to the Théâtre française had he wanted to, but he had chosen to come to the Gymnase. Because the Gymnase had amusing plays. And the play was amusing. There were no students here to second-guess his taste. And it was probably to Bahorel's taste, but students were allowed to like both high theatre and low: it was their right as students.

In the heat of the crowded theatre, jackets and neckerchiefs had come off before the first piece even concluded. Feuilly held out as long as he might, even if Laforêt had stripped to his shirtsleeves almost immediately, but by the end of the piece, he could not take it anymore. No one was gentlemanly in the amphitheatre, not amid so much heat and breath. Ada was fanning herself furiously; Mme Mirès leaned over the parapet, trying to catch a breath from below, though only the heat of the other hundreds of souls rose to the gods. She did not at all look askance when he stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves in the heat; indeed, by midway through the second piece, she had pulled her neckerchief from her bosom to mop the sweat from her face.

He gave himself fully over to the vaudeville with _Windows for Rent_. While other theatres might be celebrating the king, Feuilly was glad he had come to the Gymnase. Here, the celebration was of the people of Rheims. It was disappointing that the greedy man who sought to cash in by renting his windows on the parade route for a very high sum was brought down in the end, but Feuilly found him the most interesting character in either of the plays. Why shouldn't a man with something to sell get a good price for it? He was surprised that, upon the entrance of the artist into the crowded open house the supposedly good man was offering, Mme Mirès leaned in and asked, "Did you wish you could go to Rheims to paint the coronation?"

"I fear my talents do not lie in crowds. There was nothing that interested me in the king's return to Paris yesterday."

"You saw the parade?"

"It was a very poor parade. It would never have made a good painting. Maybe inside the church, but they won't let anyone like us try our hand at it. Those pictures must be done by the professionals."

Yet the final piece, _Charlatanism_, was easily his favourite. Feuilly remembered it had received terrible reviews, and now he saw why. The character of a theatre critic produced gales of laughter from the very knowing audience in the pit and boxes. If every audience were so kind to the authors of the piece, the critics must have been embarrassed to have been sitting in such plain sight. Though the piece was ostensibly about a young doctor making a name for himself by inventing diseases that only he could cure, the main plot could hardly compete with the satire of the theatre critic. Imagining the real critics faces was worth the six hours in the queue. It was as if he had been granted the smallest return to one of the best parts of his childhood, taking part in the theatrical community at war with the critics.

The girls did not seem to enjoy the final piece as much as they had enjoyed _Windows for Rent_, but it had proved a diverting afternoon for all the company, perhaps for everyone in the amphitheatre – one in which he had at last not thought at all about work and money, or more accurately, the lack thereof. How lucky some people were, that they could consider themselves out of money and still afford a ticket in the gods to take them out of themselves for an evening.

"Thank you so much for inviting me!" Mme Mirès cried when the curtain came down for the last time. "I have not had such fun in so long. I shall pay for this, but just now I don't care! Is this how it ought to be?"

"Yes!" Ada told her. "This is freedom. Hey!" she screamed at someone behind her. "Hands to yourself! Can't you see I'm taken?"

Laforêt's face darkened. "Which was was he?"

"Hell if I know. Felt a hand on my bum but never saw who it was."

He stood on the bench. "Oi! Who's getting handsy on my girl?!"

"Come down," Feuilly told him. "You look a fool and whoever it was is gone."

"Is that an invitation?" someone called down to him, unseen in the crowd.

"It's over," Ada told him. "I didn't see it, so there's no use fighting anyone. Better me than Madame."

"Gabrielle," she finally, rather shyly, introduced herself.

"You see, we are friends. I'll see you home. The boys can follow us. Then you won't be seen in direct company with Christian men. Christian women can't corrupt you, can they?"

There was plenty of jostling on the stairs, but they made it outside without anyone further molesting the women. "Come on, let them be girls," Laforêt told Feuilly, holding him back. "Keep an eye out, but don't follow too close. You know where you're going, yeah?"

"I think I'm probably more experienced than you are at following someone without getting caught following them."

"Do I want to know how many terrible things you've done?"

"No. Do you think Ada wants something from Mme Mirès to use against me?"

"You are taking her much too seriously."

"I overheard her talking to you once. She knows something's up."

"Well, yes, she does keep accusing you of being a fancy boy, but I think that's it. And she's done that plenty to your face."

"What hasn't she been doing to my face? I need to know. It's all behind me now, I swear. This is completely separate."

"Can it be that separate if you wouldn't know a Jewess otherwise?"

"Ada took money from that drawing, too. When I get a little money again, I might try picking up someone else from a market, see if it works again. Models aren't cheap, and Duret won't take anything until I put more work into figures."

"What does that mean?"

"I need a girl who will let me draw her naked, loads of times, from every angle. That's the long and short of it. It's about knowing how a figure is under the clothes instead of drawing clothes that happen to have a person in them. If that makes any sense."

"You might find someone at a market who'll let you draw her, but not naked."

"Story of my life. Every idea works out at first then turns to shit."

"Including seducing a Jewish widow?"

"I have no intention of seducing her. I'm not a Jew, nor am I rich, so what good am I to her? She's lonely as anything and her husband's mother has never really liked her: those are her real troubles as far as I can tell. If Ada really wants to be friends with her, that's better for her than anything I could ever be, in any guise. If Ada doesn't want to be friends with her, then what is she playing at?"

"She will laugh at you for having nothing better than your Jewess to bring today, but beyond that, I honestly don't know."

"I am grateful, I hope you know. Ada is neither your fault nor your problem."

"You were wrong, by the way. Spring's pretty much gone, and she hasn't even let me kiss her."

"Then what have I been watching all day?"

"Her show for everyone in the theatre. How else can she go safely when she hasn't replaced me? If I could just get steady work! I didn't expect it to take this long."

"Neither did I. First time I walked out, it was because I had a job. Second time, I decided I had to leave, and I had a job within weeks. How damned many more months is it going to take? I have to be going to the wrong cafés, looking in the wrong places. By rights, I should have been buying her sweets and lemonade, regardless of my intentions, instead of splitting the price of a grisette's cutlet at the market this morning."

"Do you think about going back?"

Feuilly shook his head. "I think I burned those bridges, which is all for the best. I can't keep going in and out. One has to make a choice, and it isn't as if the other path really goes anywhere but the scaffold. I've slept under bridges before; maybe I'm not too old to do it again."

"It can't come to that, can it?"

"Anything can come to that, honest or criminal."

Ada had left Mme Mirès at her door and turned back in their direction. "The Jewess is the best you could do?"

"What else did you expect?"

"I give you credit. I didn't think you could even pull the Jewess back. She's not bad. I actually like her. I never thought I'd ever talk to a Jew, much less have to decide if I like her or not. What on earth does she see in you?"

"Someone who spoke kindly to her, I think."

"She won't come out to the fêtes tomorrow, which I think is really too bad. An attractive woman her age should be married, and that'll never happen if she stays home all the time. But I suppose she must do things the way her people want them done."

"Her age?" Laforêt asked. "She's not that much older than we are if she married at sixteen and has been in Paris seven years."

"Twenty-four, probably? I hope to be married myself by then."

"So I have four years?"

"If you're lucky."

"What were you talking about just now?" Feuilly asked.

"You. And her odious concierge."

"How do those go together?"

"You were seen, he's a lecherous bastard, and there will be consequences," she explained to him slowly, as if he were an idiot. "Unfortunately, I don't know anyplace in the Jewish quarter she ought to move to because I'm not a Jew."

"Is he really going to try something?"

"Who knows? Some of them just look and talk. Others touch. But god help you with those ones if you're ever late with the rent."

"You really do like her."

"I don't wish a man like that on anyone, whether or not I like them. You find the oddest people."

"You've never met anyone else I know."

"I don't have to. You, a Jewess, Thierry – who else do I need to meet?"

"He's making friends with students."

"You said you weren't a snitch."

"If you keep it up, one day you'll meet her friends, and then she'll know everything anyway. Maybe her friends already know your friends."

Feuilly sighed. Laforêt was right. "It's only two. One is a chap who hangs around the Poles – Mlle Sophie's father and his friends. Laforêt has told you about Mlle Sophie, hasn't he?" He could not be entirely certain, since it did not really behoove a man to mention the girl he fancied to the girl he was going with, but Ada nodded. He had probably mentioned everyone in the workshop at one time or another. "The other is a medical student I met at the Salon who just likes to talk about art. It may be odd, but it isn't wrong."

"The one who talks about art, can he get you a job somewhere?"

"No. He doesn't know anyone, he just likes to talk about art."

"Then what good is he?"

"I don't know anyone else I can talk about that sort of thing with. You're already laughing at me."

"You shouldn't want to talk about that sort of thing!"

"You didn't mind when you made two francs because I care about that sort of thing."

"That's work."

"And how else am I going to get more work if I don't learn more about it?"

"You don't have to have an answer for everything."

"You don't have to tease me about everything."

"But you make it so easy!"

"Do I?"

"Well, look at yourself."

"I give up. You don't like me, you don't want to like me, and you amuse yourself kicking me around. Fine. If this is what it is, this is what it is. Have fun behind my back. Just quit it to my face. I'm tired of it. On this side, it isn't that much fun."

"Fine. I'll let you alone."

"Really?" Feuilly was surprised and skeptical it had worked.

"If you answer one question."

"One question?"

"Just one. But it has to be a real answer."

There were so many questions that could destroy everything if answered honestly, but did Ada really know enough to hit on any of them? "One question," he stalled.

"Just one," she answered airily, now playing the innocent.

"Let him alone," Laforêt tried to reluctantly order her. Feuilly was grateful for any attempt to help, but it was obvious it would do no good.

"One question, you accept the answer, and it's over and done," Feuilly bargained.

"Agreed."

"Are you sure?" Laforêt asked him.

"Has to be done, right? Not in public. Quiet and clear, no misunderstandings."

"You're taking this far too seriously," Ada told him.

"Not if I'm to hold you to your promise." He dared not take it flippantly, even if she thought she meant it as a final joke. There were too many ways it could go wrong if he were not prepared for anything.

"He has a point," Laforêt agreed.

"Fine." They were close to home in any case.

Safely in the room he shared with Laforêt, Ada making herself at home on the bed as if it were a divan, Feuilly dropped a chair in front of her and prepared for his execution. Laforêt lounged at the door, as if he were guarding the place, an attitude Feuilly might have found laughable if he were not so worried what Ada might come out with. "The question?" he prompted a little argumentatively when she did not spit it out right away.

She leaned forward, her face very close to his. "If you're not a fancy boy, then what's the deal with your hair?" Then she sat back, satisfied.

That was all? He leaned back and laughed in relief. She looked offended that he was laughing at her, but he did not care. He took a moment to let it down and shake it out before answering. "Because I don't like it short."

"That's not a real answer," she argued. "You always have it tied back, so it isn't as if it matters."

"You always have your hair pinned up under your cap – why don't you cut it off like the Breton women and make a little money while you're at it since it doesn't matter?"

"You're not answering. You know damned well it's not the done thing for men, so why do you do it?"

Bloody hell, he thought. She wanted a full answer, and he had promised to give one. He looked to Laforêt for help, but none was forthcoming. "It's not a quick answer."

"Good."

"You don't actually think I'm a fancy boy, do you? I mean, do I look like I'm trying to look like a woman?"

"I never said you were a he-she!"

"How do you know the difference between fancy boys and he-shes?"

"I have eyes in my head. You're not answering."

It was no good – he would have to say something. He shrugged it off as casually as he could and said, as flippantly as possible, "I didn't have a proper haircut until I was fourteen or so, and I never got used to it, so I gave up the pretense. I don't particularly like the done thing, but the truth is I never got used to it. If I'd been brought up to it, maybe it wouldn't have felt so wrong. That's all it is." Somehow, he had ended up more serious than he had intended.

She laughed, possibly because he had become so sober. "What, are you a wolf boy?"

"That's another question."

"No, it isn't. You haven't finished answering. You can read, so you're not actually a wolf boy. So what is it really?"

He had run out of lies – or of plausible ones, anyway – so he admitted the truth. "Overgrown gamin."

Was her horror that he was so patently low, or that she knew just what that meant? He dared not consider that it might merely be shock. "What does Thierry owe you for?"

"That's a different question," Laforêt interrupted. "An entirely different question that I've already answered."

"No you haven't!"

"I kept him from going crazy in the police depot. Not because I'd ever been locked up before, because I hadn't, but at least there were two of us. I was there, and I was a friend. That's all. He owes me, too, and he knows it. Now, I've answered two questions, so we're done."

"No, we're not. I think you're lying," Ada suddenly decided. "First I saw you, you nearly fainted because you were hungry. And no street brats can read."

"I hadn't been on short rations in a long time, and I misjudged the difference in need between a boy of sixteen and a man of twenty. As for the reading, I was hardly the only kid sleeping in building sites who knew my alphabet." Some of the others were ones he had taught, but others had come down in the world; the difference did not really matter.

"You're nothing like anyone."

"Right. I tried to be – got a job at the Lesage chemical mill out la Villette way when I was fourteen or so. Cleaned myself up, cut my hair, worked fourteen hours a day. The shit life and the shit work didn't take. So hell with it, right? Might as well be a dandy of my own stamp and at least know it's my own life. That's been more than your answer, so are we done?"

Laforêt followed her across the hall. "Are you done with him now?" Feuilly heard her ask.

"He hasn't said anything today I didn't already know about. I can pick my own friends, you know."

Feuilly got up to watch from his own doorway.

"No, you can't,"Ada told Laforêt.

"He can look after himself," Feuilly insisted.

Neither she nor Laforêt looked in the least surprised or upset that he was eavesdropping. "No, he can't." She turned back to Laforêt. "You can't. You know it's true."

"Yes, I can," he started to complain.

"If you could, if you had any sense, you'd never have left the brotherhood."

"There were principles at stake!"

"You only had three more towns! Then you could have resigned properly, with honour. But no, you couldn't be a man and swallow your weakness. You had to wallow in it, like a child!"

"I left without debt, without accusation, and without going over to the gavots like a traitor. That was honourable. It's my life to live, not the devoirants'!"

"You'd never have said such a thing if he hadn't said it just now."

"I have my own intentions. I never hid them, and you didn't care when we met!"

"It was childish. Both of us were childish. You can't just decide not to do the done thing. Look at the two of you. You both reek of childishness. No wonder you never have any luck at the dance halls. They can smell it on you. Lightness and failure. You're both still boys, not men."

"I've had plenty of luck with girls," Feuilly argued. "Christ, girls who thought me good looking are half the reason I got fed for years."

"Girls as light as you, maybe. You think I haven't seen you at the dance halls? You're boys without money, so what good are you in the world? And you're worst of all. You'll ruin Thierry."

"Isn't your thesis that he ruined himself by leaving his brotherhood? That happened long before I met him working for Cartoux, and since Cartoux hired both of us lightweights, we can't be all that worthless."

"What's 'thesis'?" she asked suspiciously.

"Your guiding idea. Your argument. The one thing you are trying to support with all this evidence. Your thesis is that Laforêt ruined himself by leaving the devoirants before his time. You try to prove that by telling me that he has not done well in the past few months since losing his job that required no special apprenticeship anyway and that his very being expresses his failure in life. If that were the case, then whether or not I have given him any ideas is neither here nor there, since I didn't meet him until a few months before we all got sacked."

"Are you trying to help?"

"If she's going to insult us both, the least she could do is be accurate about it. I don't care if you hate me," Feuilly told Ada. "I just want you to shut up about it and quit reveling in it yourself. You have so much fun hating me, but it isn't exactly fun on this side, so hate me all you like, but keep your nose in your own business. Laforêt can choose his own friends, whether you like them or not."

"I still don't believe you." She turned back to Laforêt. "If he keeps up with the students, you need to get away from him. Don't lose your head." She slammed the door just as Laforêt was about to say something.

"She meant that literally, didn't she?" Feuilly confirmed.

"She'll get off it in a few days." Behind their own closed door, Laforêt admitted, "She goes off like this from time to time. I think today it's because this is the only chance I've had to take her to the theatre in two years. The last time, it was because making fans suddenly wasn't good enough, since a very skilled joiner earns a lot more. Which is how I got the clap from Fanny Rosier. I didn't mean to drag you into it again."

"Why do you keep dragging yourself through it?"

"She'll think better of it soon enough. And who else is ever going to want anything to do with me?"

"Is this what a marriage is, only living together and shouting over the heads of your kids instead of me?"

Laforêt shrugged. "It's what happens when the shouting is over, isn't it? I don't know."

"You have parents."

"I left home at twelve; hell if I remember what their marriage looked like. I remember my mother didn't like the move to Bourges, but she kept her mouth shut about it."

"Unlike Ada."

"I think she gave me the time of day initially because there was no way I'd try to move her to some village. And if I wanted to move her to a town, it'd be back home. She wouldn't be an outsider. Everything revolves around her."

"She does rather make a point. I haven't decided yes or no on the students."

"There's politics, not just art, isn't there?"

"Of course. Who wants to talk about art with a fanmaker unless he has other interests?"

"Be careful. I don't want to get interrogated again."

"I'm keeping you out of it, I swear. Just help me by keeping Ada off my back."

"I'll see what I can do."


	55. Chapter 55

"It's times like this I do wonder if you were a fancy boy."

Laforêt could scoff all he wanted, but Feuilly was going to take the time to comb his hair out nicely. "Every girl in Paris will be out today, and I have every intention of doing my damnedest to lay one. Laugh if you like, but the barbers will all be busy this morning for the same reason."

"I'm just teasing you. Champs Elysées or barrière du Trône?"

"Champs Elysées. I'm in for the fête, not the throne."

Yet as they were about to leave, Laforêt paused in front of Ada's door. "I should check on her."

"Isn't it a bit soon?"

"Considering the fête? Go on. If I see you, I see you. Maybe I'm the childish one dragging you down. I really should check on her."

Feuilly shrugged but left him to it. As he descended, he could hear Laforêt calling her name. But she must have answered in the end, for he paused at the corner, and Laforêt did not come up to him.

If that was what Laforêt wanted in a marriage, to be berated for not doing right, he could have it. Feuilly refused to believe all women were like Lydie at bottom, but perhaps she had been typical after all. There must be exceptions – Sophie would never lead a man on if she deemed him unworthy, and Vivienne was taking whatever she could get without hopes or recriminations – but Ada had in all ways seemed emblematic of the mass of decent women. And the mass must be more like Lydie than he had thought.

Still, all he sought today was a bit of fun, a few dances and some petting if he could get nothing more. Every girl in Paris would be out, with every man in Paris after them. It was the perfect opportunity to further try on the idea of the poor artist from the provinces.

Yet arriving at the grounds, the stages and tents and dance floors set all along the Champs Elysées, his initial courage faltered. Every man in Paris would be out today, from the second richest stock broker, slumming his way through the public celebration after he had not been invited to any of the king's private audiences, to Babet's crew, looking to pick the stock broker's pocket. Every girl in Paris would be there, clinging to the lovers or husbands they already had or seeking someone better than him, just like every dance hall in Bercy or Saint-Mandé. Here he was prowling alone, when everyone who was not a predator had the decency to come in a group, proclaiming their innocence and good cheer. What had possessed him to think he ought to come to such a place at all?

He watched the professional acrobats, far more talented than the saltimbanques of the street. He listened to an entire set from one of the orchestras not playing music for dancing. He caught a vaudeville and a puppet show. The dance floors could wait until he found some new courage.

The buffets were to open at three o'clock, and he joined the crowd already prowling in the vicinity of the tables. Ragged families had come in search of free food and drink; the most ragged of men cared for the wine fountains only. The crowd was already turning rowdy, pushing up against the barriers. For so many, this was their opportunity to eat that day. Even a handful of men and women in their well-worn Sunday best crowded in anxiously, the genteel poor who otherwise would have hidden starving in their garrets but today had joined the public festivities where their need might be hidden by the general holiday.

When the gates were opened at the stroke of three, the crowd pushed forward. Unlike at the theatre, where the narrow stairway to the amphitheatre forced the throng to maintain order, the gates did little against the forward push of the desperate and the rowdy. One had to throw elbows and accept a few blows if one were to be victorious. Such sport had been easier when Feuilly was a child, able to slip between bigger men and carry the day. Today, he was content with a single thick slice of tourte of uncertain composition.

The pie proved highly spiced, the filling more meaty than he had expected. Someone had provided quite good viands to the government in place of the expected bland pap. It seem impossible to Feuilly that all the cooks commandeered for the occasion would waste such quantities of meat and spices on the expected mob, so he felt himself one of the few winners there might be that day. If nothing else, he was eating very well, indeed.

He was polishing off the last few bites when he heard someone call his name. Expecting Laforêt, it took a moment for him to realise that it was instead one of the Bretons from Lapeyre's shop, calling to him from the edge of one of the dance floors. Feuilly had never seen the twins apart, and it was a momentary shock to see only one of them, with a woman who also waved him over. Who was the woman, and what interest could she have in him?

"I'm glad to see you," Favé told him. "Irène was dying to meet you."

"Irène Quinot," she introduced herself. "Thomas is my brother."

"I've been spoken of?"

"Of course. Not many new men come through there, so you were of particular interest."

"How have you been getting on?" Favé asked.

"As well as one can," Feuilly admitted. Any contact with any sort of work had to be cultivated; it was not the time for proud lies. "Still nothing steady."

"Nevers is still drunk, which you'd think that fall would have cured him of," Favé let on. "I'd rather have you back, and I suspect Lapeyre thinks so, too."

"Thomas says you could put in the entire design by hand if you were asked. I think it must be brilliant to have so much talent at something."

Mlle Quinot was far from the prettiest girl sitting out the dance, and she probably belonged to Favé, but it was still very flattering to be praised by anyone. "It's only brilliant when it leads to work. I rather suspected your brother didn't like me."

"He thinks himself cock of the walk, and you put your nose in, that's all. Piran told me all about it."

The other Favé, it turned out, was dancing with a very good looking girl. A girl who, it seemed, was not his and was not so taken with him, for she went off to her own friends at the end of the dance while Favé joined his brother. "Feuilly, good to see you. How go things?"

"As well as can be expected without steady work."

"We've got to get you back. Nevers gets the shakes once a week. Where's your brother?" he asked Mlle Quinot.

"With Dora, I think. I did not expect you back so soon."

"You may be the only woman in Paris who doesn't mind our accents."

"Your French has gotten much better over the years. That girl doesn't know what she's missing."

"You're alone, too, I see," he observed.

"A man without a job is usually a man without a girl."

"Unless he's slumming it." The girl he had been dancing with was now chatting gaily with a whole group of young bourgeois. "Not much chance for us if they aren't marriage-minded."

"I'm not particularly marriage-minded," Mlle Quinot reminded him.

"Only because you have to wait out or wear down your father."

"Maybe someone else will come along before that happens."

"And you'd leave me for a Frenchman?" her Breton asked.

"Never. Come dance with me!" She pulled Piran toward the dance floor, not that he was making anything but a mock reluctance. "Stay there," she ordered them. "We'll be back."

"So, your brother and Quinot's sister."

"Quinot has decided to accept it; their father, not so much. But he'll come around one of these days, if Irène keeps insisting she'll be an old maid otherwise."

Quinot finally made it over to them, no girl on his arm. "Feuilly, good to see you. Where's Irène?" he asked Favé.

"Where do you expect? On the floor with Piran. They'll be back after this set. Where's Dora?"

"With her friends. One of them went hysterical over some man she hasn't gone with in over a year, so I decided I would leave them to it. Do you understand women?" he asked Feuilly. "I sure as hell don't."

"Does anyone?" Feuilly asked.

They dropped the subject for the moment, chatting on about work and Feuilly's lack of it. Quinot thought he might know someone who might know of something that could be going in a month or so, which was the closest thing to an introduction Feuilly had had since Lapeyre had paid the café owner for him, so he took it as a sign that his luck might well be changing.

As they were talking, Favé caught sight of a girl who was looking in their direction and nudged Feuilly in the ribs. "That one. Tall, blonde, green dress. Which of us do you think she's looking at?"

"If it's me, I'm not biting," Quinot said. "Dora would find out and ruin everything. It's probably the pretty bastard." He shoved Feuilly playfully. "Go on."

"Go on, give her a try," Favé urged.

She was very pretty, indeed, across the crowded floor, and even prettier up close. He tried his most charming manner. "Mademoiselle. I hope you will forgive my forwardness, but I couldn't help seeing that we had attracted your notice. Might I introduce myself? Daniel Feuilly."

"Sylvie Lourdin. Who is your friend?" she asked eagerly, his heart sinking. "The tall one, not the ginger one."

"Quinot is already engaged. His girl is looking after a friend of hers in some sort of crisis. Might I at least have a dance, so you can drop me gently? It would be kind of you."

"Since your friend will not come, why not?"

Mlle Lourdin danced well, but Feuilly knew she was showing off for anyone else who might be watching, not for her unfortunate partner. Still, she had been polite enough to drop him nicely rather than directly insult him or use him without his permission. He had done much worse, and he knew he should not have tried so hard with a pretty girl who could not have been more than eighteen. Lydie was the only one of that sort he had ever succeeded with, and she had been hand-picked for him, strung along on another woman's promises. He thanked Mlle Lourdin for her time, and her kindness, and she let him kiss her hand goodbye.

Piran Favé and Mlle Quinot had joined their brothers when he returned. "She wanted you," he told Quinot. "I said you were taken."

"Damn. Did you learn anything else?"

"What good is it if she thinks you engaged?" Irène told him. "Do I need to go find Dora?"

"She's to meet me here once Charlotte Menet stops weeping, whenever that turns out to be."

"Oh, it's Charlotte! That could be hours without some help. You'd be a friend and flirt with Charlotte, wouldn't you?" she asked Feuilly. "She's good fun when she isn't weepy. All she needs is someone to rub in Didier Vinchon's face, if that's the trouble."

"I believe that's the trouble," Quinot agreed.

"Piran and I will go find them."

"How kind of your sister to give me the weepy one," Feuilly accidentally said aloud, cursing himself the instant he realised he had given voice to his ill conception.

Quinot laughed. "It is rather cruel of her, isn't it? I will say Charlotte is as pretty as that girl who dropped you, so it could be a much worse offer."

Dora proved a thorough unremarkable girl, possessing neither beauty nor an interesting ugliness, lacking even Mlle Quinot's vivacity. Charlotte, on the other hand, was as beautiful as promised, with a milkmaid's perfect complexion and bright blonde hair. She did not bother to hide that she was looking Feuilly up and down as they were introduced, her eyes still a bit red from her tears. "Dora says you're a painter." A healthy suspicion was evident in her voice.

Quinot cut him off before he could answer. "He is. Worked with me for a while."

"If our friends are so keen to set us up in a dance, who are we to say no?" Feuilly proposed.

Whether she decided there was no way out of the proposition or he was at least acceptable for a single dance, Feuilly never discovered, but she did agree to be led to the floor.

"Your hands are so soft! You work with Quinot?"

He was not surprised she sounded skeptical. He was the only man in the shop who did not haul on ropes for his wages. "I did for a while. Corrections, not on the printing line. I'm a painter, as mademoiselle said, not a printer. No rough cables for me."

"What do you do now?"

It was no good lying, not when Quinot might know a man who might know a man. "A little of this, a little of that. Anything going. I was a fan painter until my employer went out of business."

"Don't you hate that?" she commiserated, to his surprise. "I came here with the promise of a job with a staymaker, and that only lasted a day before bailiffs marched in. Everyone makes promises and no one has to keep them. It's not fair."

Irène Quinot turned out to be right. Whatever Charlotte Menet might or might not want of him, she was kind and charming to him in a way no pretty, decent girl had ever been. She permitted familiarities Sophie never would, and he knew she must have given up her virtue to M. Vinchon if she was taking his reappearance so ill so long after his departure, but she still seemed decent at bottom, neither grasping nor sluttish. The two years she admitted to working in Paris had taught her the score, and she accepted it as she was now accepting him. She was not witty, but she was good humoured, and the exertion of the dance brought a perfect flush to her cheeks, augmenting her already considerable beauty.

"We should stick the two of you up on one of the stages to play a pair of shepherds," Mlle Quinot joked when they rejoined the group. A couple more girls had arrived with their men in tow, expanding what was in truth Quinot's family circle. Charlotte was Dora's cousin, and one of the new girls and one of the new men were Quinot cousins.

It was Feuilly's first experience with the way he had always heard families functioned. His life had been spent among those without family, either by choice or by fate. Even Laforêt had half-broken with his family due to his choice to leave the brotherhood: he had family, but only from afar. Feuilly's connections had always been made through friends and cafés and work. No one in his circles ever asked, "Have you met my brother?" or "Do you know my cousin?" But here, everyone was related or would be soon by marriage. Yet it was no closed circle, for the only explanation for his presence - "he worked with Thomas" - was sufficient for entry. It was no rarified social world, but it was precisely the sort of circles he and Laforêt were blocked from at the dance halls. Perhaps that was what Ada saw as their childishness, that they were the juvenile wolves without a pack, prowling around the edges but without the charm or money to work their way in.

The company was genial enough, particularly as pretty Charlotte let him have two more dances, and they finally found a girl willing to spend an evening with the unattached Favé. This was precisely the life Feuilly had set out to claim when he had left Babet's crew behind. If Ada could see him among these people, would she still consider him too light, too childish? If the Quinot clan thought him so, they did not let him feel it.

The sun had set when Dora finally took her cousin away. "If I wanted to see you again, would you like that?" he dared ask Charlotte. If he were honest, he found her a bit boring, but she was very pretty and had given him more attention than any girl in years. If she were willing, he might see her at a pleasure garden on Sunday, bring Laforêt and Ada along, and slip away with her for some petting whilst they distracted her family.

Charlotte did not quite shrug, but her meaning was clear. "I wouldn't mind it, really. I like the Hermitage best." He was certain he could read the implication: he would do very well until someone of means, or at least the pretense to them, came along.

He accepted it with a smile, for how much better could he ever hope to do? She might only want a little petting and nothing more from him, anyway. "I hope I shall see you there some Sunday, mademoiselle." She did flush and smile when he kissed her hand.

Quinot hung back to thank him. "It was a big favour, and I'm grateful."

"Your sister was right: she's a great girl when she's not weeping. You just owe me a drink with your friend, and we'll be even."

"Of course. Week from tomorrow, after work? The usual café."

Feuilly bade him goodbye and headed deeper into the remains of the fête, looking for Laforêt. There were three other dance floors still set up, lanterns blazing in the dark, and Laforêt was surely at one of them, with or without Ada. Feuilly was rather sorry he had not run into Laforêt whilst still in Mlle Menet's company: it was not that he sought to rub his success in a friend's face, merely that he wished to share his good fortune. And he needed Laforêt's experience to help him navigate this new social circle held together by ties of blood.

Yet when he was hailed from one of those remaining dance floors, crowded in the last hour or so of the fête, his heart sank. It was as "M. Feuilly" his name had been called, and it was by a small group of the students, including the dour Spaniard. The Spaniard had a pretty girl on his arm who must have been attracted to his money rather than his ill-assorted features. Of course it had not been the Spaniard who had hailed him, but the short, bright provençal most likely to have been dangled from the bridge if their circle were responsible for the virtuoso graffiti. The blond formed the last of the small company, neither Combeferre nor Bahorel in sight. Gendarmes had stood guard everywhere all day, maintaining order just as they had done the previous afternoon at the theatres, and these naïve students had dared hail a workingman in his Sunday coat. It was the pretty girl who waved most for his attention, and that pushed Feuilly to answering their call despite her attachment to the Spaniard.

"A pleasant coincidence, messieurs, I hope?"

"Assuredly!" the short provençal exclaimed. "With four dance floors, it's certainly a coincidence, and a very pleasant one at that."

Feuilly bowed to the girl and introduced himself. "Emma Lavisse. I take the blame if we've pulled you away from something. They pointed you out, and I was dying to meet you."

"Really?" Why did girls suddenly want to meet him? What were people saying about him? Particularly these students, discussing him with their mistress.

"Germain has the most interesting friends. I love meeting all of them."

"You've been sadly misled in my case, I fear," Feuilly lied. He knew perfectly well that he was probably more interesting than most of the people she might have met, but those aspects were precisely the ones those students should neither know nor share with her. "I'm surprised you would wish to be seen speaking to me in the presence of so many interested parties," he said to the boy who had hailed him.

"I just wanted to say hello and ask how you found the fête. Then Emma wanted to meet you. That's all, I swear."

"How have you found the fête?" the blond asked, trying to assert a more sensible tone over the conversation.

The provençal laughed. "Please, answer Faniel. I make a mess of everything."

"I have passed a pleasant day on the public expenditure," Feuilly replied. "Though I would have preferred to have worked this week, free plays and dances or no."

"You're still on day work, then?" the provençal asked. Courfeyrac, that was his name, Feuilly suddenly remembered.

"I have a few hooks out; something has to bite," he answered, doing his best to stay friendly. But the students, the gendarmes, even the girl had him on edge. It had been a good day, no matter what he told these bourgeois. He had eaten well, he had a line on something that might become a real job instead of makework, and he had danced several times with the sort of pretty, honest, hardworking girl he had always craved greater acquaintance with. And now the students had stuck their noses in it, rendering his successes paltry in comparison to their very existence, pretty Emma on the arm of the ugly Spaniard. The sheer number of gendarmes and soldiers looking on kept him off balance, restrained his ability to respond to the students even more than his innate courtesy did.

He let them chat with him a bit more, neither his heart nor his head really in it. At least the last suspicions he had of their relations with the police fell entirely away. Professionals would not have the girl; amateurs who had never gone beyond their small circle of friends would be the fools to introduce their attempted recruits to their mistresses, for what else did one do with mistresses outside of bed except show them off to friends? Why was Combeferre with such reckless boys? Monday's procession and the discovery of the graffiti had put him in mind to seek Combeferre out again, but if these were the other men at that table, was it really so wise?

There were too many soldiers in Paris this week. The king was afraid, and his fear would lead directly to men asserting their right of rebellion as the scared man cut at his foes, liberties falling aside in the name of one man's peace of mind. The Greeks rebelled, and their suffering increased as the Turks feared them more and more. It was worse for the Jews in Egypt, wasn't it, before they were permitted to leave? Tonight, Feuilly could see at a glance that they were surrounded by fear, and these children were too blind to see it. The police would have no qualms about locking up pretty Mlle Lavisse as a whore and interrogating her for days and weeks. Did they understand that the women from his shop had been taken in, too? Did they care what became of the people they used, so long as they themselves escaped the guillotine?

At the same time, it was hard to be suspicious of Courfeyrac, with his smile as bright as the summer sun. He had an open countenance that simply could not take on the traits of the spy, the conspirator, and that was in itself the problem tonight. Feuilly thought he looked so open that he must not understand that others must be circumspect in their actions, in their attachments. He would be a terrible conspirator, always with his foot in his mouth, his face unable to show anything but his good humoured interest.

Courfeyrac whispered something to Faniel then grabbed Feuilly by the arm. "There's a girl over there that I'm dying for you to meet. The blonde in pink, on the other side of the dance floor."

Another girl, Feuilly muttered internally, though he allowed Courfeyrac to drag him along. To refuse would be to make an observer suspicious. There was nothing for it: he would see the evening through, arrange a meeting with Combeferre, and drop the whole sorry business.

They skirted the edge of the dance floor. "I didn't like the look that gendarme was giving us," Courfeyrac said in his ear when they were close to the orchestra. "Pretend we're talking about the girl in pink. I bet she's a tiger."

Feuilly took a quick glance back at Courfeyrac's friends and flushed in embarrassment. A gendarme in their vicinity was now looking in the direction Courfeyrac had led him, observing what Feuilly had always known was an improper connection. The wolf had been so wrapped up in his own head that the puppy had got the better of him. He forced a laugh, as Courfeyrac had indeed quickly devised the only possible cover story and all he could do was play along. "A tiger, indeed. Yes, one may want to beware her claws."

"Combeferre is very impressed," the boy added quickly. "I'd like to talk more at length some time. If were curious about the Polish exiles, might I find you in their company some evening?"

A minute ago, Feuilly would have brushed him off. But there was nothing boyish in him now: he had seen the danger and manoeuvred out of it with all necessary speed, and his enthusiasm to meet was tempered with a sobriety Combeferre must respect. They were close to the girl. The gendarme's attention, or Courfeyrac's deliberate timing, had left him little time to think. He had already misjudged the boy once, so perhaps it was time to let him say his piece. "I am there frequently," he replied.

Courfeyrac grinned brightly. "Excellent." Yet he turned suddenly to the girl, his conspiracy ended for the moment. "Mademoiselle, my friend saw you across the floor and declared you had the most dazzling eyes he had ever seen. I simply had to see for myself it were a trick of the lamps, and I am so pleased to discover he was absolutely right"

One look at Courfeyrac's fine coat and hat, and the girl immediately gave him her hand. All luck belongs to the men of money, Feuilly reminded himself. Had a Courfeyrac been on offer, he would have got nowhere with Charlotte Menet. "I shall leave you to it," he told them, certain the girl was now an opportunity rather than a cover. The gendarme had appeared to move on to other targets, and in finishing his circuit of the dance floor, Feuilly satisfied himself that it was indeed the case. Were there no real pickpockets for the man to watch? It was past time to go, to leave the streets to the occupying army. Catching up with Faniel, the Spaniard, and the girl, he made his goodbyes. "The hour is late, and I'm not one for being thrown out of a dance hall at closing time. Good evening to you, messieurs, mademoiselle." Just before he went, he locked eyes with Faniel. "Tell Combeferre from me: Sunday, same time, same place." Tipping his hat to them all one last time, he slipped away into the shadows.

Laforêt was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, when he returned to the flat. "Didn't you go out?" Feuilly asked in concern.

"Did. No luck with anything. You?"

"Same here," Feuilly lied. It was better to share a bed in companionable silence than in unacknowledged jealousy.


End file.
